Borderlands 2 The Series: Season 2
by BlandGardener
Summary: Our heroes find themselves on a distant planet that refuses to be plundered so easily. Reading season 1 is recommended. I'm aiming for a funnier, more action-packed and darker story. Mostly darker.
1. 2X1: Tha World Conquerors, pt 1

Tap. Tap. Tap.

That was what he felt on his forehead, the prodding flick of water dripping down on him. He opened his eyes to see the high cave ceiling at least fifty feet above him. It was covered with numerous flies with luminescent wings, the only light in the otherwise dark cave. He was lying in a shallow pool of water in a small pit that he seemed to fit perfectly inside as if it were carved around him. He struggled to sit up and failed. He fell, content to lay on his back momentarily. He rubbed his head, not even minding that his clothes were more than a little wet. He tilted his head, running his an index finger through one of his ears, trying to draw the water out. In the midst of that, he brushed up against his own face and felt scruff.

"The fudge?" he faux-cursed out loud and rubbed his face and hair. He felt like he had quite a beard and wet hair that grown down to the bottom of his neck.

He looked over to his left and saw what looked like Gaige in the dim light, still unconscious. He took his rifle and tried to use it to stand but fell flat on his face. His legs were numb and felt like jell-o.

"Son of a-", he said. "Really?!"

He pulled his rifle over to his storage deck, automatically digitizing it and simultaneously thanked whatever deity existed that it actually worked. He then used his arms and the muscles that did work to inch-worm over to her. She was soaked like him and her hair was a crazy red mass; it had grown like crazy too.

"Gaige!" he yelled out, shaking her. "Gaige!"

He then drew back one of his hands, after licking his fingers and smacked her hard across the face, causing her head to turn violently in that direction.

"Raaaaah!" she screamed, waking up instantly and going into defense mode, slapping her hands out and scratching wildly. "Rape! Rape!"

"Ah, dammit!" Axton yelled, slapping back a bit but mainly just trying to guard his face. Her digistruct claw tore into his arm pretty badly. "****, ****; dammit, Gaige! It's me!"

He finally got a hold of her wrists and pinned her arms to her chest.

"Gaige, it's me", he told her. "Ax!"

She stopped resisting and narrowed her eyes up at him in the darkness.

"Ax?" Gaige asked before breaking out of his hold and wrapping her arms around him, drawing him in for a hug.

"Whoa, kid!" he chuckled.

She mumbled something into his shoulder that he couldn't understand.

"What?"

"I said I can't believe we're alive!" she said after she pulled her head up but still hugged him. "Thank God!"

"Will you two shut the hell up!" yelled out a familiar-sounding Truxican. "I'm trying to concentrate on moving my legs over here!"

"Sal!" the two of them yelled out almost simultaneously.

"What, you think you're gonna survive and I won't?" Sal asked. "Bet you a billion that I outlive the both of you idiots!"

Axton managed to pull away from Gaige's grasp and rolled over on his back next to her.

"Maya?" Axton called out. "What about you? You up?"

"Yeah", they heard Maya say a way's off from them, behind Axton's and Gaige's heads. Axton tried to raise his head a bit to catch a glimpse of her but he couldn't see her in her pit.

"I've been awake for a while now", she went on. "Just thinking."

"Okay…", said Gaige. "Thinking about what?"

"Self-reflection", was all Maya said.

There was an awkward silence.

"I'm awake too, you know, in case anyone cares", Lilith said aloud.

"I am fine as well", Zer0's unique voice called out.

"Whoa, Zer0!" said Axton. "You alright?"

"I've been better."

"Is anybody else paralyzed or is that just me?" wondered Mordecai.

Everybody else murmured and half-shouted in agreement.

Suddenly Gaige began shushing everybody.

"Guys!" she said in a hushed tone. "Shut up for a second! Do you hear that?"

They all strained to listen for a second. For a while, all they could hear was the low flutter of the bio-luminescent flies on the ceiling but after a few seconds, they could hear the thuds of something deeper in the cave.

"Eh, it sounds pretty far off" Salvador said. "I ain't worried."

"Dude, screw that", Axton said. "This would be a crappy way to die. I can't even defend myself! Try to wiggle your toes!"

"I have been trying this for the past twenty minutes", answered Zer0. "I am not an idiot."

"Dude, state the obvious much?" Salvador piped up. "Yeah, okay, I'm just going to sit here paralyzed. I'm ************* Salvador!"

"I didn't mean to question anybody's smarts", replied Axton. "Some things just need to be said for motivation."

"An approaching creature that might be coming to eat us isn't enough for motivation?" asked Lilith.

"I'm just trying to help!" Axton said in defense. "Can everybody not jump down my throat at once?"

"Look", Maya said, "Axton meant no harm in suggesting that we all try to move with those weird noises in the distance."

"Thank you", said Axton.

"Though it was a dumb thing to say", finished Maya.

Axton sighed in resignation.

The thuds were getting closer and more pronounced, accompanied by the sounds of crumbling rocks and skittering noises.

"Dammit, this sucks", Gaige said, still unable to move.

"Maybe if we don't move, it won't see us", suggested Axton.

"Okay, who said that?" asked Mordecai. "Seriously, I want to slap whoever said that."

It was hard to see in the dim light in their vast cave but the ground-shaking stomps and the horrible skittering sounds were unmistakable; the beast was in the same room and was within one hundred feet of them. They couldn't quite make out its form but they noticed a large portion of the brightened cave ceiling was blocked out by it. The size was still hard to tell.

They heard Lilith scream out.

"Lil'!" yelled Mordecai. "What's going on?"

"****!" screamed Lilith. She cursed a lot more than that, really. "It got me!"

Gaige and Axton looked up and noticed Lilith being carried high above the ground by the monster, trapped in a sea of clawed, crablike arms, clutching her against the monster's underbelly.

"You better get off your asses and save me!" she shouted down at them.

"Crap", said Axton. He looked at Gaige. "Start beating my legs!"

"What?" Gaige asked as the monster walked over them and began to leave the room.

"You start beating my legs and I'll start beating yours!" he yelled at her.

He reached over and struggled to pound on her right thigh with his left fist.

"Hey!" she yelled. "Stop that!"

"Do you feel it?" he asked.

"No!" she said, "but it's so rude!"

"Come on!" Axton said, hitting her on the thigh.

"Fine!" she said, hitting him in the back.

"Hey, kid!" Axton said. "I can feel that just fine! Just go for my legs! It hurts!"

"I'm sorry!"

"I mean, you're weirdly strong for an eighteen year-old girl!"

"I said I'm sorry!"

She swung her body around with her arms to get better access to his legs.

"Okay, go!" he said and the two of them began beating on each other's legs to work out their numbness.

"Ah, I love my friends", commented Zer0.

The frenzied hitting continued for another twenty seconds when Axton cried out.

"Ah, crap!" he yelled. "I felt that! Stahp!"

"I feel it too! Let's try to stand!"

Axton and Gaige both struggled to push themselves to their feet, wobbling quite a bit but Axton produced a Damned Cowboy assault rifle from his storage deck to use as a stand of sorts. He took a few wobbly steps.

"Okay, I think I'm getting the hang of this…", Axton said, taking some ginger steps.

Gaige was wobbling back and forth trying to maintain her balance.

"I think I got it", she said, shaking to and forth. She suddenly realized her leg was healed. "Hey, my leg isn't broken! Damn, I'm falling!"

She lost balance anyway and fell face first to the ground, almost knocking Ax over.

"Okay", Mordecai called out as the two of them moved slowly from the others. "What about us?"

"Hey, man", Axton said, "let us focus on one thing at a time. Lilith's in trouble! Come after us when you can actually walk."

"But I can't even see you!" Mordecai said, as he was trapped by a corner.

Gaige limped to her feet and pulled the PB&J SMG from her storage deck.

"I've been dying to try this", she said.

"Let's go", Axton said as he pulled a mini-flashlight from his storage deck to light their path a bit as they navigated the cave. The cave was a slightly winding but mostly straightforward path away from the pits they had woken up into. He looked at both sides of the path where there deep long cuts in both sides as it something had taken blades to both sides.

"Hey, slow down", Gaige complained. "Still a little numb and recovering from a broken leg, remember?"

"Sorry", Axton said. "Strange how that works, right? We go through the doorway and our wounds heal, I grow a hobo's beard and your hair is suddenly long as hell."

"Yeah, it's pretty strange."

The two of them were quickly coming up on the cave's entrance as they could see the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak.

"Ah!" yelled Axton, shielding his eyes from the bright sun. "Jesus!"

Both he and Gaige stumbled to the sandy ground, realizing they were on a beach of sorts but weren't really all that focused on that at the moment. The sun was amazingly bright and scorching hot; they instinctively scrambled for the nearby boulder to their immediate right and put their backs against it.

"Either we've been in the dark for too long or this planet is too damn close to its sun!" yelled Axton, rubbing his closed eyes.

"Maybe it's both", answered Gaige.

Gaige went pulled down her work goggles over her eyes and turned on the digital dimlight setting.

"Ah, that's better", she said.

"Got another one of those?"

"Sorry, no."

She peaked out from behind their rock and looked down the rocky path for the monster. It was huge, with four crab-like pincer legs that stabbed into the ground. It had a deep blue, humanoid torso with muscular, bulging arms and a wide, bony skull that resembled a crown of sorts. She could make out some of the curved, tiny arms sticking out from the sides of its body. The monster was about twenty feet high from the ground from its legs to its crown. It was moving rapidly towards an ocean with what they already knew to be Lilith.

"Gonna have to make a move, son-son!" Gaige said, readying her new SMG. "You're gonna have to suck it up about your vision."

"Alright", said Ax. "We make a move on your word. Gaige?"

Gaige had already ran out from behind cover and fired off some rounds at the beast, slagging it in the back as well as pounding it with some hard-hitting explosive rounds as the PB&J was capable of.

It squealed unpleasantly as it spun on its haunches and turned towards them. It looked at them, snapping its spiky clam-like jaws open and shut. Lilith struggled in the sea of forty or so arms on its underbelly.

"Oh, thank god!" screamed Lilith. "Get me the hell out of here. It stinks!"

* * *

**Introduction Alert**

The Badass Crab-Man: _Gaige just gave it this name…you just try to come up with names for monsters from distant planets. It isn't easy!_

* * *

"Down with the crab-man!" Gaige yelled as she let loose into its human chest, blasting holes of gore from it.

"Crab-Man?" Axton asked. He blinked against the light as he popped off a few rounds at the scuttler. "That the best you can do?"

"Why don't you just…_shaddup_!" she fired back.

It roared as it scuttled towards them amazingly fast. Due to his loss of sight, the monster's speed scared him enough to flinch and leap backwards, shooting wildly.

"Hey, man!" cried Gaige, jumping away. "You're almost got me!"

She blasted the thing in the face a few times, causing it to stagger.

Lilith began struggling in the crab-man's grasp and realized that her whole body could move. She responded by enveloping her body in a phasewalk sheen and burned a few of the arms with a small fire nova. The crab-man roared loudly before it dropped Lilith to the beach.

That was when Gaige advanced on it, blasting it with the PB&J. The fact that the crab-man was slagged made it that much more susceptible to the rounds of her and Axton, who followed her lead and blasted it in the chest. In anger, it lunged at them and swiped at Gaige with its right arm. It knocked her high in the air, sending her flying to the ocean behind it. She fell twenty yards away in the water.

"Oh damn", said Axton, following her with his eyes as she soared through the air.

It reached out with its fist and wrapped it around Ax's waist.

He grunted in pain as the crab-man pulled him in up and towards its mouth, squeezing him tight enough to threaten the breaking of ribs and the crushing of internal organs.

Lilith lunged forward and punched the crab-man in the gut, making it drop Ax to the ground.

It tried to impale Axton on one of its legs but it found itself dazed and sluggish so he easily rolled out of the way. He flung a Sabre turret on the ground before backing off.

Lilith flew through the air under her phasewalk and kicked the beast across the head, cracking its protective shell over its otherwise delicate head.

Axton and his turret focused fire there, shooting off most of the rest of the protective plate and eviscerating its brain. The crab-man staggered a bit before tumbling and crashing onto its side, dead.

"Niiiiice", hissed Axton.

Lilith walked over to him.

"What a rush!" yelled Gaige as she walked back to them from the shoreline.

"Gaige, you alright?" asked Lilith.

"Yeah, dude", Gaige answered. "I didn't feel anything. Shielding. I kinda want to do it again. Maybe DT can fly up and drop me in…"

She trailed off and looked above their heads.

"What?" they asked almost simultaneously.

She wordlessly digistructed Deathtrap in preparation and readied her PB&J. The other two turned around and saw a descending black prism descend towards them. Deathtrap made a familiar hum and superheated its claws for an incoming battle.

The top point of the prism fired out a beam at Lilith encasing her in a stasis field of sorts.

"Lilith!" yelled Axton.

She levitated in a purple field of energy and could be seen shouting something to them but they couldn't hear her though she was right next to them. They both fired on the prism but their rounds bounced off or exploded on impact to no effect.

Suddenly, the prism rose and flew away from them, dragging Lilith and her field along behind it. They could see that she was still screaming.

It got worse as about eight or so sera and arch guardians materialized from seemingly out of thin air.

"Great!" shouted Gaige. "Just what we need! Grab me, DT!"

Deathtrap swooped down and leaned down one shoulder so that she could leap onto it. She sat on like she did when her leg was broken, steadying her SMG.

"Let's get it, DT!" she screamed, twirling an index finger.

Deathtrap grunted as he began to spin in a vortex as she let loose with her slagsplosive rounds in all directions as the guardians closed in on them.

Axton set down a phalanx-covered turret and another with two rocket launchers attached. The guardians, unaffected, barraged the shield with highly explosive eridian tech crystals. Under this attack for four sustained seconds, the phalanx shield was blown away and the turret producing it was immediately destroyed.

A guardian immediately flew down right for Gaige. It grabbed the barrel of her SMG as she was firing and took her with it, yanking her from Deathtrap's shoulder and flung her to the ground. She tumbled into the gravelly ground with her weapon as it kept its flight path towards the ocean.

She barely had a chance to stand up when another arch guardian descended upon her. She was able to physically stand her ground for a second before it lifted her high off of the ground and slammed her down. She grasped it around its long, slender neck with her digistruct claw, cracking the metal that comprised it as the fangs of its steely mask screamed at her.

Deathtrap had tried to help her but an arch guardian had flown into it, swinging its spectral blades clean through his chestplate, splitting and re-digitizing him.

The other guardians weren't showing Axton the most loving of receptions either. A sera guardian fired a few e-tech rounds at his turret, exploding it. Axton leapt away in a combat roll, sliding into the rocks but got to his feet easily enough. He started a dead sprint away from them towards Gaige's position. An arch guardian produced an eerie sound of liquid swishing that sounded a bit like a laugh. It took up chase and was closing in fast.

Gaige lifted her guardian high enough to see this.

"Ax, watch out!"

Just as the guardian reached out for him only inches away, he dropped to the ground and rolled, letting it fly past him. He produced a rocket launcher from his storage deck. He went to a stable kneeling position and quickly put the guardian in the back to blast off its spectral wings. He fired and got a direct hit. The guardian shook in the air but turned around, not the worst for wear. It hardly did anything.

"What the _hell_!" shouted Axton, disheartened quite a bit. "Really?!"

"Axton, help me!" yelled Gaige, who was still struggling against the guardian. Axton dropped the launcher and tried to tackle the guardian from her but it didn't budge. It was like running into a squirming steel wall. He tried to push it off to no avail.

"And the others are still laying on their asses", Ax complained as he strained, thinking of his compatriots. He took out his hatchet and hacked at its wings; it was ineffective.

The guardian knocked him aside easily with one arm, sending him sprawling backwards into the rocks. It then lifted Gaige off of the ground by her left shoulder with one claw as it stood up and flung her at Axton as he stood up.

Axton barely had time to react and tried to catch her in his arms at the last second but the force and velocity at which she flew at him was pretty high. Her shoulder blades smashed into his face and the two rolled backwards over each other several times before they both slid to a halt.

Axton was lying on his side with his hands over his face, concussed and hurt. Gaige looked up from the ground next to him and saw a long, man-shaped figure levitating in the center of the guardians. His silhouette was completely black with blue, illuminated trails running along his flesh; he had six steel, bladed-wings hanging high along his shoulder blades and spine; he produced faint bursts of blue electricity as he floated there. Two of the wings in the middle flapped constantly like a mockingbird while the others flapped lazily. He then turned towards the two of them, revealing hollow sockets that a blue light seemed to be glowing from deep within. He pointed at them and four of the arch guardians advanced on them.

.

The others had heard the fighting as they slowly exited the cave, intending to follow Axton, Gaige and Lilith. Unfortunately as they came into the sunlight, they were immediately struck by how bright and hot it was.

They immediately hopped over to the nearby boulder and rest against it.

Maya looked out from behind their rock to see the last of the arch guardians take flight and head for the ocean. They were carrying somebody that she had to squint to see. The striped stockings and converse sneakers were unmistakably Gaige's.

She ran out but in a second they launched themselves away. She raised a hand to phaselock them but they were already well out of range.

"Dammit!" she yelled, falling with her knees to the ground.

Zer0 walked over to her, not affected much by the sunlight. He kneeled down and put a hand on his shoulder. She shrugged it off.

"We just got here and we already lost three", Maya said. "Zer0, what the hell is this place?"

Before he could answer, Salvador shouted at them.

"Guys! We got company!"

He shielded his eyes a bit to look down a hill, opposite from the beach. There were a group of six very tall figures, all carrying strange, glowing staffs.

"Eridians?" asked Maya.

"Warriors", confirmed Zer0 as he nodded. "Like me."

"Six Zer0s", Mordecai said. "Makes for an _awesome _day."

.

The first thing Axton saw upon coming to was a swirling, glowing red cylinder core running the entirety of the fortress holding him. His arms and legs were restrained by a thick, leathery membrane that pressed him into a slab of eridian metal. His slab was upturned forward at a forty-five degree angle, so he was facing the ground, only there was no ground. All that was below him was darkness, more eridian slabs and the red, spinning core; he was suspended on a metal plate hundreds of feet above whatever ground there was.

"Great, of all the jails I've been in…", he said regretfully.

"Whoooooooooosh", he heard a digitized voice murmur as a buzzing sound approached him from above. His slab was turned in such a way that he couldn't see what it was until the being appeared, looking directly into his face.

The being's flesh was the blackest tone with flowing streams of blue liquid flowing throughout his body. Blue light emanated from his otherwise empty eye sockets as well and shone out of the back of his hollowed out head. He was long, a little over eight feet tall and had six metallic wings on his back. Like before, two of them were moving incredibly rapidly. Two smaller guardians trailed him, followed him and zipped around after him everywhere he went.

Before Axton could even react, the eridian jammed a syringe with a rectangular device on the end into the side of his head, through the temple.

Axton screamed out in pain and shock. A long string of curses followed when the eridian yanked it out and flew upwards and away, taking his guardians with him.

"Come back here, you…son of a bitch!" he shouted after his captor. "Where the hell am I?!"

Miles away from the cave and beach that houses the doorway Axton and his friends came through lies a dark place in the ocean. Twenty feet above this spot is a floating tower of darkness. This tower of swirling motors and red lightning changes the very surroundings around it, creating sweeping tides and horizontal red lightning in the skies above it. This is the mostly unattainable tower that holds Axton, Gaige and Lilith.


	2. 2X1: Tha World Conquerors, pt 2

**Author's Note: If you've read part 1 before June 14, read it again before reading this. I changed something small but very vital because it didn't work with what I was trying to do. Other than that, please enjoy. **

**.**

"So, what do we do?" Salvador asked Zer0 as they stared down the warrior eridians. "Are we shooting?"

"No!" said Zer0, a bit excited especially for him. "Don't…do…that. Put away all weapons. We'd be full of holes before we even touch our triggers. Just raise your hands and stand here."

"I don't…", started Salvador.

"Do you trust me?" asked Zer0, not even looking at Salvador, just taking his sword and all weapons on his exterior and digitizing them for his storage deck. "Then do as I say."

Salvador exchanged glances with Mordecai and Maya. The situation was dire; just like that, they had lost three more. All they had was a number of four on a strange, incredibly hot world. But they did trust Zer0, especially since he had a better idea of what the strangers would do better than they did. They digitized all weapons and raised their hands like Zer0.

The eridians started for them. They walked but with the distance they covered, they might as well have been running. They were in front of them in ten seconds though they were originally at least a hundred yards away. They wore dark, tattered cloaks made of a soft, native cloth. Two of them carried long, metal staffs with six-toothed blades on the end. The other four carried strange rifles with dark crystals for the barrels.

One tall eridian walked around the travelers, looking them over while the other warriors held them at gunpoint.

Zer0 said something to them in a strange language that none of the others could even attempt to pick up. One answered back before another went on what sounded like a long rant. The warriors in front then turned on their heels and began walking away. The one behind them stayed in his position.

"They want us to follow", Zer0 told the others.

"Really now?" asked Maya, with a raised eyebrow.

Zer0 began walking so the others eventually followed.

"So, when do we make our move?" asked Sal.

"We don't right now", answered Zer0. "They know what we did to come here. We're revered in their eyes. Nobody has come through that gate in a very long time. Something like that is to be respected."

"So, we're just supposed to trust them?" asked Mordecai.

"No, but I am watching them", stated Zer0.

.

Axton had been calling for his eridian captor to face him for about twenty minutes when his voice started to grow really hoarse. He was done shouting when his slab suddenly seemed to disconnect from the tower wall and ascend upwards through the air. He was already suspended so high in the air and now he was levitating on a rectangular plate at a relatively high speed, unsupported by any harness of any kind. His vertigo gave him a jolt as if his body was subconsciously yelling at him that he should start screaming.

"Yeeeaaah!" he called out. "I don't like this!"

.

The eridian warriors led the adventurers to the mouth of massive cave a few hundred yards to the east of the beach. The cave quickly turned into a massive downward spiral underground with various channels veering off into separate paths. Their journey was illuminated by floating orbs of light that floated in seemingly random patterns but Zer0 could tell them that their patterns were in fact programmed. These, along with tall, rock-covered vegetation provided the little nutrients that eridians needed to survive and thrive. The warriors brought them to an open doorway and one brought up a hand, signaling them to slow down and watch their step.

The room they brought them two was expansive, a descending walkway that brought them to a small, ruined underground city of sorts, an arrangement of stone houses in absolute disarray and shops surrounding a massive temple that curved upwards much like a pyramid, only the top of it was missing as they could it was ripped apart and left in giant pieces. The cave ceiling above it was ripped open as if something massive had attacked them and dozens of eridians were moving large rubble with their guardian helpers. It was as if some disaster had struck down upon them and they were the disaster relief.

"This is just…wow", commented Maya as she looked around.

"What happened here?" asked Mordecai.

The eridians paused and looked at each other.

"What?" asked Salvador impatiently.

"You…don't remember… anything?" asked an eridian.

"You speak English?" asked Mordecai.

"Remember what?" asked Maya. "What are you talking about, eridian?"

"It's getting worse", the eridian said.

"Okay, you're starting to piss me off", Salvador said before turning to Zer0. "Can I shoot this guy? Start making some sense!"

"If he doesn't explain himself, I might beat you to it", admitted Zer0, looking at their warrior guide.

"Please just bear with us", the warrior said before turning to one of his brethren and putting a hand on his shoulder. "Grab a digger and meet us at the grave."

The other warrior walked off past everybody before their guide turned to them.

"Please come with me", he told them. "I'll explain everything."

.

Axton found himself levitating behind his flying eridian captor as the alien reached into a crevice in his tower's core. His plate was automatically brought to a halt so he just floated helplessly at the eridian's whim.

"Hey, dude!" Axton called out to no response. "Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey, ****face!"

The eridian still went on doing what it was doing, not paying Axton any mind.

"You have no idea what you're doing, do you?" asked Axton. "You have hostages; this is the point where you threaten me and tell me 'if you don't tell me what I want to know, I'll hurt your friends!'!"

The eridian turned angrily towards Ax fiercely with its hollow eye sockets and the blue light within it intensified.

"See, that's a start", said Ax as he swallowed.

The eridian held out an open palm, seemingly summoning Axton's slab towards it as Axton found himself hurtling in the air before stopping just short of him.

"What the…" Axton began as the eridian reached out and squeezed his bicep. Although the thing seemed to emanate light from inside itself, its touch was biting cold. It actually hurt to have the thing's finger press onto Axton. The thing then reached up and pressed its fingers into the side of Axton's neck and rolled his head around forcefully. Axton groaned and cursed at the treatment.

"He'll do just fine!" called out a female's voice from above them. That voice sounded absolutely familiar. Axton looked up as high as he could on his slab, seeing a bipedal, womanly figure descending towards them using a hundreds of metallic coils that alternatively tangled and untangled around her limbs to slow her descent. The coils that lowered her weight would slowly withdraw back into the walls.

She eventually made it until she was face to face with Axton. She was human and wore a body suit of thin, purple polymer adorned with eridian glyphs. She was wearing no makeup, had grown even paler, had her raven-black hair grown out a bit to the bottom of her neck and the dark rings around her eyes suggested that she hadn't slept for days but there was no mistaking it: this was Dr. Patricia Tannis, alive in the flesh. She didn't look like a corpse and there was no hole in her head. She looked at Axton with an expressionless face, with the metal coils tangled around her wrists, waist, ankles and thighs. The coils were black but Axton could see some faint dark liquid running between metal plates on them through some tubing inside.

"Doc?" asked Axton. "Is that you? How…?"

"Hello again, Axton", she said in monotone voice but one definitely hers. Slowly, the left side of her lip began to twitch involuntarily and pull upwards so she slapped herself hard across the face. "Stop it!" she screamed at herself.

* * *

**Reintroduction Alert:**

Tannis_: __Sometimes they come back…_

* * *

"I see that you've met my assistant, Cassium", she said, casually waving off the eridian. "He's mostly useless but he's an eridian scientist so that's convenient. Whatever."

* * *

**Introduction Alert:**

Cassium: _As mute as he is monstrous; he will mess you up. _

* * *

"Doc?" Axton called out to her, confused. "What's going on? You're working with this thing and how are you even alive?"

"Okay, you must be _confused_", Tannis said as the coils carried her over to Axton so that she was only inches from his face. "YOU DON'T KNOW ME So stop acting like you do, okay?"

Tannis surprised Axton by shouting at the top of her lungs before suddenly dropping her voice to a monotone like before. He also noticed how wide her eyes had gotten before going to a drowsy state when she talked to him normally.

Cassium whistled at her, drawing her attention. When she looked at him, his internal light dimmed a bit.

"That's right", Tannis said, looking back at Ax. "You don't remember…"

"Remember what?"

"How many times have we had this conversation, you … brutish … man?" Tannis asked as her metal tendrils carried her back over to Cassium. "You are no use to me, really. YOU'll join the machine, AGAIN, and fuel my tower."

"Wait!" shouted Axton as two of Tannis and Cassium's servile guardians came to retrieve Axton.

"What?" she demanded to know, stopping everybody in their tracks.

"Sooooo", he said, "yooouu're … evil, noow?"

"Put him in the ENGINE!" she commanded of the guardians, looking over her cracked fingernails. "I tire of this, already."

The two guardians grabbed Axton's slab on both sides as they flew him down towards the bottom of their floating tower.

"I don't care if you were my friend, doc!" Axton yelled as he was being taken away. "You stab me in the back, I will **** you! I don't mean sexually, I mean I will **** you _up_ so don't take that as me raping you 'cuz I'm no rapist! Plus, I'm pretty sure you're a zombie!"

"Oh, that's real cute!" she shouted after him. "If I weren't having you mutilated, I'd wash your mouth out with soap! And…_you're _a zombie!"

She looked over at Cassium.

"That was a good insult, right?" she asked him.

.

Maya, Mordecai, Salvador and Zer0 were led through away from the crumbling subterranean temple. En route to their destination, Zer0 explained to the group that his people had always lived beneath the surface. Eridians had always found the ground more conducive to their technology and they found protection there.

"Safe to practice your magic?" asked Maya.

"Magic?" asked Zer0.

"Yeah, you know…" Maya said, "pulling rabbits out of hats, putting people in suspended animation ..."

"I'm familiar with the concept of magic", scoffed Zer0. "I assure you that we don't think of it that way."

"Before we proceed, I would like to introduce you to our binder, Physis", their eridian guide said as they walked in the path of a very tall, cloaked eridian. "She's magic."

Physis towered over everybody else around them and must have been at least nine feet tall, with long, thin limbs and a crazy long cloak drawn over her wiry frame. Her general demeanor reminded Maya far too much of Calime, whom Maya still harbored much resentment. Maya looked up at this eridian Physis and immediately found her suspicious.

* * *

**Introduction Alert:**

Physis:_Matriarch of the eridian tribe…respect her authority?_

* * *

"So we meet again, adventurers", Physis greeted them with a slight bow.

"We know each other?" asked Salvador, _really_ looking up at her.

"You haven't told them?" asked Physis to one of her tribesmen.

"I thought it would be best to show to them", he said.

"That wasn't discussed with me", she said to him.

"But, Binder, how else would they believe us?" he reasoned. "The words by themselves mean nothing if there is no context. They have to see for themselves."

Physis looked over at the newcomers before looking back at her tribesmen. She nodded slowly.

"Fine", she finally agreed, "but consult me on any further decisions, understand?"

.

As Physis led the group to the site, she explained the situation. The planet they have long inhabited is called Nyaos, which means 'New Home' in their tongue. Physis' particular people are a tribe called the Phyzoa that had embedded themselves in their current territory several generations ago. They don't remember Pandora as it has been many years since the eridians left the planet, perhaps longer than the heroes thought. As the average lifespan of an eridian is well over two hundred years, several generations can be a long time. Most eridian tribes on Nyaos were relatively peaceful with each other as there had been no major conflicts for many years, happily trading and establishing romantic pairings between tribes. However, a common enemy to all eridians had been the scourge, Cassium.

More unnatural evil than eridian, Cassium had plagued all eridians for many years, kidnapping many to perform ghastly, tortuous experiments and power his hellish, bio-organic machines. Some say his machines are powered by the organic matter of living things; some say he harnesses organic matter to extend his own life span. There is only one thing that is certain: his main stronghold is the Scourge Tower above the Blighted Sea, a floating hell that emits dark radiation that mutates not only a large portion of the ocean below it but twists the sky above it as well. No sapient being that has traveled there returned.

"All know where he is", Physis told them, "but when he invades regions for his next victims, not even binders such as I can nary damage his weapons, so what chance can anybody have to invade on him?"

"That's where they took our amigos?" asked Salvador as they reached the end of the Phyzoa dwellings. "We have to go!"

"A fool's mission", Physis told him, "and an unnecessary one at that."

"Excuse me", Mordecai said. "I know you don't know them so you probably don't give a damn but those are our friends so we don't care how dangerous it is; we're going for them even if we die trying!"

"But I _do_ know them, Mordecai", she said to him. "I know all of you: Salvador, Maya, Gaige, Axton, Lilith and the one who calls himself 'Zer0'."

She looked right at Zer0 as she said that. He stared right back at her, thankful that he had replaced his mask because he could tell she had quietly attempted to shame him.

"We've met quite a few times before, actually", she said. "You've even taught my people a few things. When Cassium last attacked, you helped in our defense. Hence…"

She pointed to the destruction to their temple and surrounding city.

"You just don't remember", Physis continued. "Although, I often wonder if it's your same body that re-emerges from the pool. Or an entirely new one."

"What…the hell are you talking about?" asked Maya. "You're not making any damn sense. Tell us where the hell this damn Scourge Tower is or I'm just going to put a bullet through your brain or whatever the hell keeps you alien bastards alive!"

"Maya…" Zer0 said, reaching out to calm her down.

"Don't touch me!" Maya said, knocking his arm away and turning her attention. "I'm sick of this! You have not helped us since we got here! You've just gone along with this! I'm sick of it! Every eridian I've met has either lied to me or attacked me! Why don't you tell me the truth, Zer0? Huh? Whose side are you on? Our's or their's?"

Physis had turned away from them during their argument to look outside. The thick fog had begun to spread over the Phyzoa regions.

"The Misting Cycle", Physis said aloud. "A period of time throughout our days that we can take solace in guaranteed peace. The sun's rays wears on our waters so that near its settlement a thick fog blankets our land. These are our ideal hunting hours; Cassium's machines do not work well in the fog so he does not attack during this time. The fog will protect your flesh from the intense light. Come, there is something you must see."

.

The travelers followed Physis and the Phyzoa warriors through the fog that was so thick they could only see a few feet in front of them and horribly at that. They kept stumbling over rocks and debris but Physis and the other Phyzoa could maneuver just fine through the fog. They could actually hunt through that? The fog was also incredibly hot and humid, no doubt because the sun was still so prominent.

Physis stopped at a dug pit in the solid ground where a tall eridian stood nearby awaiting their arrival. He was taller than even Physis and his solid body was incredibly thick about the shoulders, chest and hands. He had long, thick arms that reached to the ground and he leaned forward them much like a bullymong, only they were harder than most stone. Zer0 called him a breaker, the cornerstone of an eridian civilization who could dig through the ground at immense speed. They carved out real estate for entire civilization and cultures, even things such as vaults. Right then, he had dug out a hole in the ground, punctuated by a rifle embedded in the ground like a tombstone. There were some words etched into the ground below the rifles. They read:

**Our friend and fellow Vault Hunter**

It was unmistakably a wide grave and inside of it was a stone casket of sorts. Maya immediately jumped in before anybody else could react.

"Maya!" Mordecai said, reaching for her but she already leaped down and flung the cover out of the way.

The smell was sweet to a fault and she covered her mouth and nose as it was overbearing; it was a substance the eridians used for their version of preservation. Maya looked down and saw the body covered in a cloth veil. She could see the delicate, paleness of the skin as the arms crossed over the chest of the gown the body was wearing. Maya slowly reached down to uncover the face, something Mordecai, Salvador and Zer0 watched intently. Maya gasped and backed away when she saw who it was.

* * *

**Reintroduction Alert:**

Tannis: _…Wrong. _

* * *

Her body was preserved to an extent and Maya could see that her wound in her head was cleaned out but the smell of decay was starting to set in just beneath the sweet smell, her flesh was graying out in some areas and Maya saw a strange centipede-like creature fall out of the hole in her head before she backed away.

"You-you took her body w-when we were out!" Maya stuttered, trying to rationalize in her head what was happening. She took out a plasma caster from her storage deck and shook as turned to Physis, who looked down on her in the hole. Tears streamed down her face as she pointed it at the eridian binder. "How…why did you do that?!"

"That's not what happened", a phyzoa warrior said. "Please just listen to us."

"You had no right!" Maya shouted at her. "You didn't even know her!"

Salvador, Mordecai and Zer0 were stunned. They didn't know _what_ to think.

"'She should be in every history book", Physis went on, "we would have never found you if it weren't for her. We owe her everything. She died for us'. Those are words you yourself said."

"I never said that!" shouted Maya.

.

The servile guardians brought Axton down low in the giant scourge turbines for their grisly duties. While one subdued him, the other burned away his fleshy binds to the slab with its plasma blade. They then took Axton over to his place in the engine. He shouted every curse at them that he knew. Sharp turbines spun within the crevice he was intended for; devices meant to cripple and maim him before his descent into the scourge engine.

.

"You came to us weeks ago", Physis said to Maya, who still pointed the gun at her. "I didn't know what you were but you proved yourselves to me when you helped us. Now, I want to help you."

.

Axton's eyes opened with a jolt. His body convulsed and he immediately realized he was in a shallow pit in a shallow pool of water. He looked around and saw he was in a dark cave. All over the ceiling were bio-luminescent flies, which provided the caves its only real light. He watched as an isolated group of them created a formation of sorts that resembled what looked like a figure-eight infinity symbol.

He laughed out loud, shaking it off.

"Hey, guys!" he called out to his friends. "I guess we made it! Guys?"

He slowly turned his head to look around for the others but saw nothing. He was alone.

"Guys?"

He heard footsteps approaching in the dark.

"Guys?"


	3. 2X1: Tha World Conquerors, pt 3

Maya planted her ass squarely on the beach, the same one where she saw Cassium's guardians fly away from, presumably carrying Axton, Gaige and Lilith. She tried to meditate and reach out to her siren sisters but she found herself locked down on Nyaos for some reason or another. If she had a star map, maybe she calculate its distance from Pandora but maybe that didn't matter anymore.

She bowed her head down to her knees, ignoring the sweat beads dripping down her arms from the humidity of the fog. The Misting Cycle. What a joke. She rubbed her shoulders. Her torn arm was completely healed. She looked at her markings. There wasn't a scar there, as if it never happened. It _did_ happen. She remembered the intense pain of having her arm in the mouth of that raskillion and the horrible, tingling feeling of having her arm barely hanging on afterwards like a half-assed phantom limb. There was no worse feeling she could imagine. She could still feel that strange, sharp tinge in her nerves from it. There would be nightmares she could tell.

.

Salvador, Zer0 and Mordecai came upon Axton to find him lying on his back in the very cave that they remember waking up in. They couldn't help but have similar thoughts of wondering how many times they've woken up in that cave but didn't remember.

"Guys?" Axton called out. "Where were you guys and where is everybody else?"

They exchanged glances uneasily.

"What's with the stares?" he asked, wiping his face. "Something on my face? Whoa! I grew a beard. What the crap! I grew a beard?"

"Let's help you up", Salvador said as the three moved forward and helped him to his feet. Zer0 and Mordecai draped each of his arms across their shoulders and began to walk him out of the cave.

"Thanks, guys", Axton said, "for the help. It's like my legs are asleep. I can't move them."

"No problem, bro", Mordecai answered, "Say, you know how Pandora had these computer New U stations?"

"Uh, no Mordecai", Axton said with dumb look on his face. "I don't remember dying a hundred times and respawning like the damn matrix. Chea! No! I don't remember those! Get real, Mordy."

"Well, what if I told you that the eridians have an energy-based New U station only this one leaves your old body hanging around when you die and creates a new one for you but the new you has no memory of what the _dead_ you did?" Mordecai said in one breath. "So, you could be stuck in one area, dying over and over for days, weeks and even months possibly from the same causes and not even realize it. What would say about that?"

Axton thought this over for a bit; he opened his mouth to say something before closing it again.

"So…wait", he said. "You're saying … hypothetically, I'm assuming … that I died a hundred times in the … same exact spot … and I didn't even _know_ it?"

"I'm not telling jokes here, man", Mordecai said after a sigh.

"Well, _good_", Axton answered, "because you're _terrible_ at them. You should never tell another joke again because that one didn't even have a punchline. You know how people say 'I'm not laughing _with_ you, I'm laughing _at _you'. Well, that was so bad I can't even do _that_."

"And _you _went with this?" Ax asked Zer0. "I'm so appalled. You're both better than that. Where's Gaige? She's gonna get a kick out of this."

While Zer0 and Mordecai took Axton out of the cave, Salvador stayed back. He was a bit interested in what was exactly so special about that cave besides the fact that it kept reviving them repeatedly.

.

With a flashlight in hand, he wandered over to the area where they appeared after going through the doorway. He saw the human shaped indentions in the ground filled with water and gravitated towards the smallest one, which was obviously his. The limbs and torso on the pit were a bit wider than that of the others. It was formed perfectly for him. A few questions popped up in Sal's mind; like how were these made? Then he thought, if they kept reviving over and over without memory of their past lives, then was it possible that they weighed into the ground or something? Why revive in these spots? He walked over to his pit and stomped on the edges of it. Pieces of soft rock broke off easily and fell into his shallow pit. He then knelt down and reached into the pit, feeling the sides of it. The rock was wet and relatively soft. Damn, he thought. They must've died a _lot_.

.

Physis had declined to make the journey with them as her place was amongst the phyzoa as their matriarch but an astral projection of her appeared besides Maya nonetheless for guidance. As Maya sat on the beach, a semi-transparent vision of the eridian stood beside her, looking out into the mist and ocean. The sea waters were quite murky due to Cassium's pollution and radiation.

"The waters are very toxic, even to my people", Physis explained. "Cassium performs his biological experiments and expels the waste into the sea and air. Strange monsters have emerged as a result, not that he cares. He has torn apart regions of this world, looking for something."

"We have to stop him", Maya said to her. "He still has Lilith and Gaige, two of my friends. If he's as horrible as you say, who knows what he's doing to them. I can't just wait until he kills them off so they can regenerate. You can't ask me to do that."

"Of course", Physis said with a slight bow. "I'll provide all the help you need. My people are preparing a vessel for you as we speak. It will make its way to you shortly. I know you are great warriors. I only ask that you take caution. Cassium is very powerful. We have never been able to defeat him and if you don't mind me saying, neither have you."

"We'll see", Maya said simply, looking away. "Do you know anything about sirens?"

"I knew this question would reappear", Physis said with a sigh. "I'm sorry, Maya but my people have remained isolated from the hierarchy for so long. That knowledge was never passed down to me."

"Of course", Maya said gloomily, "I find myself on a planet where eridians live and still no answers."

.

Lilith pounded her balled up fists against the inside of the purple prism that was her cell, screaming to be let out. The air was thinning inside, making it hard for her to breathe. A small port opened up beneath her feet and a gelatin-like substance began to fill her tiny prison. She tried to squirm away from it but the prison was filling up fast and the substance clung to her tightly and formed to her body, keeping her from moving. It filled all the way up to her shoulders and she began screaming and panicking.

However, it stopped just above her shoulders and the four sides of the prism slowly opened outwards, exposing her to the interior of Cassium's scourge tower. The whole thing was a vertical nightmare; there were no floor to speak of, just an elevating three hundred and sixty degree display of various containers of Cassium's experiments and specimen along the wall. This would be a very difficult if not impossible place to invade, let alone fight in and that is exactly what the tower's master intended.

Lilith found herself encased in the goo, standing straight up against the wall on a relatively small platform. Below her was a black abyss that she couldn't even see through.

"Daunting, isn't it?" called Tannis as she descended towards the captive on her metal coils, accompanied by Cassium behind her, elevated with his mockingbird-like metal wings.

"What the-?" Lilith asked. "Doc, is that you? Am I dreaming? You're supposed to be dead!"

"You're not dreaming, Lilith", Tannis explained, spreading her arms with a smile. "It is I, the one who discovered the artifacts, the one who discovered the vault, and ultimately the one who discovered the eridians."

"O…K…what?" Lilith asked, trying in vain to move. "What the hell is going on?"

"Oh, do you hear that, Cassium?" Tannis said back to Cassium with a chuckle. "She's playing the fool now!"

"Cassium?" Lilith asked, looking at the strange eridian, confused.

"LOOK AT ME!" growled Tannis, as one of her coils shot out and wrapped itself around Lilith's throat and yanked her attention back to the scientist. "I will not be disrespected by the likes of you, siren. Five years ago, I was the _only_ reason you ever found the vault and the only thanks I ever received was scorn, sneers and jokes at my expense. You had the audacity to look at me like _I _was the traitor when it was _you_ who was screwing up everything! You and your brainless scum friends!"

"You're not Tannis", Lilith managed to choke out as Tannis wasn't intending to strangle her but actually restrain her further. "I saw Adam Blitzfield put a bullet in her head. She died."

"Well, it seems that the submerged vault had a few properties we weren't aware of", Tannis said. "Like when we emerged on this side, the eridians stored our souls, our biological components; whatever you want to call it, they stored our bodies so that everytime we die on this world, we re-emerge at the doorway, only you don't retain any memories from your emergence to your death. As for me, well imagine my surprise…"

.

As the vault hunters appeared in their cave for the very first time. Dr. Patricia Tannis was the first to wake up in screaming hysterics. She screamed so loud that she wondered later how she didn't wake up the others. She reached up to her head, scared that she was going to find a hole there and shaking all the while. To her shock, she found no wound. She looked beside her to her right and gasped before crawling away. She couldn't comprehend it; something inside of her snapped and she regressed to a psychotic breakdown right then and there, muttering gibberish to herself. What she saw next to her was her own pale, slimy corpse with a slick, messy head wound.

.

"I don't know if it was a glitch or an actual function of the vault but I was recreated in a new body while my old one remained in its decrepit state. At first it saddened me, but then it angered me. It was a constant reminder of what you did."

"What did _I_ do?" asked Lilith.

"Oh, _sooo_ many things Lilith that I've actually lost count, which is something I previously thought impossible!" she shouted. "You know, there is an old religion for inbred Neanderthals where 'moral' wrongs are considered 'sins'. "

She even used finger-signed quotation marks to emphasize she thought the words 'moral' and 'sin' to be incredibly stupid.

"You mean Christianity?" asked Lilith, flippantly.

"Would you like to hear your 'sins'?"

"Do I really have to?", asked Lilith in an actual begging voice.

"Don't kid around, Lilith!" shouted Tannis. "I am _not_ in the mood!"

"It's just I already know what you're about to say", Lilith said. "You're an evil clone of Tannis and I've pissed you off over the years, now you want to hurt me! Blah Blah Blah! Will you just do your speech where you're gonna kill me or something!"

"I can't kill you!" shouted Tannis. "Haven't you been listening to anything I've said? I-I-I … oh, my word. What were we talking about? Just now?"

There was a brief pause between them.

"Are you freaking kidding me?" shouted Lilith, struggling in her goo. "Are you gonna do something or are you just gonna talk at me? Get me out of here, Tannis!"

"Calm down!" Tannis yelled, trying to scream over Lilith, moving away and plugging her fingers into her ears. "I can't think when you're…I can't concentrate…Loo-la! Loo-la!"

Cassium just sat back and watch as the two enhanced human women had an immature shouting match. He somewhat enjoyed it.

"Enough!" screamed Tannis, who silenced Lilith at last. "I can't kill you because you will just reincarnate at the gate so I will instead put you in a comatose state and when those idiot friends of ours arrive to rescue you, I will do the same to them!"

"Wait!" shouted Lilith as Tannis turned and started to ascend back towards the top of the tower. "Why don't we just be friends like we used to? Why are you doing this?"

"Because get ******, Lilith!" Tannis shouted back as she continued to ascend, leaving Cassium to approach Lilith with a long, thin syringe in hand.

"Well, crap", Lilith sighed before he shoved the needle into her temple.

.

As the hunters were beginning to realize, the phyzoa weren't completely powerless, nor were they without technology. They watched in awe as a couple of phyzoa approached the beach from the Phyzoa regions in their produced vessel. It was a smooth, black ship with a thin bow and stern to cut through storms. The entire thing was cast in lightweight but strong almacite, a great metal used for construction on Nyaos. The passenger compartment was similar to human ships, with a small cabin for shelter and soft metal seats for other passengers. The whole thing was twenty feet long and nine feet wide and hovered slightly above the ground with a binder's eternal unflame, a strong natural force of eridian culture.

"The scourge tower's location is already displayed on the navigational tracker", the phyzoa explained to them. "I am sorry, friends, but we cannot come with you. This is a fight we cannot afford to take part in. We do not regenerate like you do."

Salvador wanted to get angry or chide them for being cowards but on the other hand he understood. They didn't want a fight with Cassium and they didn't even know Lilith or Gaige. They were helping out a lot already.

So, the phyzoa pushed their vessel from the shores and the vault hunters were off into the open waters through the thick fog, hoping to find a floating tower in the middle of the ocean.

.

Zer0 manned the controls and navigational system while Axton looked over his shoulder. The controls weren't levers that Ax was used to, but rather embedded orbs that rotated over and around in the dashboard to steer the ship. The map was a digital hologram that marked both the scourge tower with a flashing red dot and the vessel with a purple dot. Axton scooted very close to Zer0 as he captained their vessel. He even placed his chin on Zer0's right arm to see around him.

"You think we can do a somersault in this thing?" asked Ax.

"Maybe", replied Zer0 playfully before coming back a second later and telling him "no".

"Aaaww", he whined.

"Do you want to try?" asked Zer0.

"Sure", replied Ax as Zer0 graciously stepped aside and move his palms over the orbs, rotating the left orb forward slightly.

The boat surged forward quickly, jerking them ahead.

"Hey!" Salvador yelled, as he was out near the bow. "Watch it!" He followed this up with a string of Truxican curses.

"_Easy_", whispered Zer0 as he gestured Axton to calm down by lowering his right hand. "The controls are quite sensitive."

Axton eased back and found a smooth spot in tilting the ball forward, returning the ship to its smooth, steady progress.

"Thing has some horsepower", Axton remarked.

"Like all fighting, piloting requires masterful control", Zer0 stated. "Fighting requires calculation and skill, limiting not only your opponent's moves but also your own. And indeed, maneuvering is a form of fighting; against yourself."

"If you're talking about patience", Axton said, looking back slightly, "that isn't one of my strong suits."

"I've noticed", quipped Zer0.

Axton laughed at that.

"The last boat I drove went into the docks", Axton said, "of course, it was on purpose sooo…"

"I know", Zer0 said, forming a smiley-faced emoticon over his mask. "I was there."

"Oh, yeah". This was a time when they were in Argus, fighting a witch doctor's tribe alongside Doc Hammerlock. A caustic witch doctor was giving them a bit of trouble so Axton hopped in their boat and rammed him into the dock, pinning him down so that the others could kill him. It was one of his happy memories. "Good times."

.

Salvador, who was acting pointman at the bow of the ship, kept an eye out. His job was mostly useless because the fog was so thick that they had to rely on the ship's computer navigation anyway. He quickly changed his mind on this when he heard some strange whistling in the sky above him. It sounded like flares going off. He turned in time to see a flaming object hurtling towards him. He quickly lunged out of the way in time for it to clip a chunk of the bow of the ship before it impacted the water, creating a geyser that jetted upwards, splashing Salvador, Maya, Mordecai and almost the entire deck of the ship.

"What the hell was that?" asked Mordecai. He and Maya both ran towards the bow. He examined the smoldering hole while Maya looked over the side for the ship for whatever hit them. The two of them looked up towards the foggy sky as more dim fireballs soared over them into the water. Mordecai caught a glimpse of the debris. It was metal.

"It's not a meteorite or some crap like that", he pointed out, taking advantage of his amazing eye for detail. "That's debris."

"Keep progress", Zer0 instructed Axton. Zer0 moved out of their cabin and looked at the others with concern.

"What are you doing?" asked Mordecai, who looked to his right as Maya bent down to untie, then remove her combat boots and socks.

"I want a closer look", she said as she pulled off her pants as well and ran barefoot towards the edge of the ship and dived into the water. She swam ahead a few meters before diving down for the sinking debris.

"And you thought _I_ was crazy!" Salvador shouted, throwing his hands up and walking away.

"We should stop!" stated Axton.

"No!" Zer0 ordered him. "Keep going!"

"We're gonna run her over!" Axton snapped back.

"Fire is raining from the skies upon us", Zer0 informed him as he walked back towards the open cabin to shove Axton aside from the controls. "If you won't act to save us, I will!"

Maya shot up from sea to the right of the ship, encased in a phaselock globe of her making. She leapt fifteen feet above the ship from the waters and slowly descended towards the deck at a dramatic rate. She carried a long piece of debris, actually a piece of a jet fighter wing.

When she landed, Salvador and Mordecai approached her to get a better look. Axton just wanted a look at her wet in her undies.

"What the hell?" commented Mordecai.

It was a burnt but unmistakable orange color. They could still make out the jagged symbol of an eye with a fiery tear falling from it. That logo belonged to none other than their sworn enemies.

"Helios?" asked Salvador. "Son of a bitch! They're here?"

Salvador drew his Maggie revolver, ready for a fight. He calmed down and was taken aback a bit when the fog began to dissipate. He and the others looked ahead and realized they were approaching the Scourge Tower.

.

The floating red and black fortress was gigantic, dissipating all fog around it as if it were the center of a tropical storm. The bottom of the tower was an open port that seemed to emanate a thick red smog. The water immediately underneath this was discolored red and bubbled within a one hundred plus meter diameter. The top of the tower was producing periodic sparks of red-colored plasma electricity and red smog as well. The sky above the tower seemed to share a red discoloration like the ocean. It looked hellish.

"Oooh, spooky", mocked Maya as she sat down to pull her pants back on.

"Lock and load, people!" Axton shouted as he moved back to the controls and slowed the boat to a crawl. "Sal, I'm surprised you don't have your guns out already!"

"Who do you think I am?" Salvador asked, pulling the trigger promptly to spin the barrel on the shredifier in his left hand. "You need to apologize to Maria…"; he lifted the shredifier in his other hand and spun that barrel as well, "…and The Diabolical Sex Machine! Like…right now!"

.

Cassium floated over to his controls and input a few commands on a console consisting of several eridian glyphs over stone. An energy-based window materialized right in front of Tannis that showed her a clear picture of the vault hunters approaching their scourge tower.

"My word, this is amazing!" she exclaimed, clearly impressed. "It's like you read my mind! You have to show me how you did that! This is … high-definition, isn't it?"

The window seemed to zoom in on Maya as she was lacing up her boots, before moving on to Salvador with the long-barreled rifles in his hands.

"We have a welcoming gift for them, don't we?" she asked Cassium over her shoulder. He immediately input another command into his console.

.

"Oh, would you look at that", pointed out Axton from the cabin. The scourge tower's power began to surge as red light began to emanate from the open port in the base of it. Suddenly, a condensed beam of energy emitted from within the structure and struck the ocean beneath it, creating a shockwave of pressurized water that shot out one hundred meters out in all directions, smashing into the the ship.

"Holy-!" yelled out Sal as a high tide of water fell over him and the deck, washing him out to sea.

In three quick seconds, Maya, Salvador and Mordecai were all tumbling into the ocean's depths. Axton was only saved because he was in the three-sided pilot cabin and even the ship itself had almost been toppled. He was dazed, sprawled out beneath the controls, attempting to regain his bearings. Zer0 had been knocked against the far east side of the deck and had almost flown overboard himself, only being saved by the wall.

"Screw this!" Axton said, crawling outside onto the deck, drenched from head to toe. He deployed a double-rocket equipped sabre turret in front of him and manually locked onto the scourge tower through the controls on the back of it. He then set another down next to it, doing the same thing. He watched in glee as both turrets let loose a barrage of carnage against the scourge tower. Huge shards of glass and metal bounced off of the tower's hull from the explosions and Axton could see the tower swaying from side to side due to each blast.

He then pulled a rocket launcher from his storage deck and took his place to the right of them, letting off his own rockets at it through his sights.

Zer0 crawled onto his belly and struggled to push himself to his feet.

"Hey, Zer0!" Ax yelled between rockets. "Get off your ass! I could really use your help over here!"

.

Salvador tumbled deeper and deeper into alien waters. He had no thoughts left at all, all he felt was the desperate pain that invaded his head, chest and throat filling him up to his limits. He had no swimming experience so while his instincts made him hold his breath at first, the panic of dropping so fast quickly overpowered him. He took huge gulps of Nyaos seawater and knew he wouldn't last long. Thankfully, a hard, thin arm wrapped around his waist and yanked him upwards.

.

"I don't like this, Cassium!" Tannis said with her limbs spread wide as she swayed in her metal coils due to the tower being shoved by Axton's barrage. She barely dodged a falling mirror from above, along with other debris. "Do something before I put you in the trash heap! Make him stop!"

Cassium looked upwards towards some of his experimental concealment chambers. His eyes glowed red as he activated the seals to open them.

.

Axton noticed some figures flying out from the port of the tower. He fired a few of his rockets at them while his turrets focused on the tower. They seemed to dodge the rockets with ease and he realized they were picking up great speed as they zoomed towards him.

He rolled out of the way to his right as a tall, winged, guardian-like automation landed right on top of one of its turrets, crushing it and created a deep crack on the deck of the ship, causing the entire ship to sink closer to the water. It then turned and took one of his energy-constructed axes, smashing the other turret repeatedly.

The machine turned towards Axton, shaking horribly as if it was struggling to keep itself together. Instead of standing straight up like other guardians, it was hunched over and uneven but not at all frail like the eridian-made guardians. It was not a guardian but a newer bio-mechanical experimentation created from the bodies of eridians, humans and guardians. Two red, energy-based axes hung down from long, metallic hands and frantic, murderous eyes stared out from beneath the guardian mask on its drooping face. Three more of its kind almost just like it landed on the ship beside it, breaking the ship even more. Red wings of plasma carried them through the air, dissipating as they touched ground.

* * *

**Introduction Alert:**

The Scourge: _Cassium's version of the eridian guardian angels are his guardian demons._

* * *

Zer0 pulled out a Maliwan shock SMG and shot the lead scourge right in the mask. This immediately caused it to leap up and frantically go for Zer0, swinging both axes like a madman. Its screams sounded eerily like a man with his voice muffled.

Zer0 frantically dodged while one of the scourge's buddies lunged into the fray and swung for Zer0 as well. He stepped backwards from the scourge's unskilled but extremely powerful swings. He tried to raise his SMG but the monster knocked it from his hands over the side of the boat.

Axton tried to help, aiming his rocket launcher at the things, only to have another quickly bring his ax down onto the rocket launcher; it lobbed off the vital barrel and almost took Ax's arm with it.

He backed away, pulling out an assault rifle and let loose about ten rounds on it at point blank range to the chest. Each round bounced off with a metal dinging noise and were ineffective as it skidded towards Axton like an animatronic theme park attraction. Backed against the pilot's cabin, he reached into his back pocket and flung his hatchet right at the beast's face, knocking its mask off. This didn't deter it, however, and it was still coming for him. At the last millisecond, Axton leapt out of the way as the scourge smashed through the metal cabin behind him.

Axton crawled away as Maya levitated above the water with a choking Salvador and Mordecai in a phaselock bubble with her.

"Well there goes the ship", Mordecai muttered, surveying the damage.

One of the scourge noticed them and raised one arm at them. A red-energy constructed gatling gun formed around its wrist with rounds and all. It opened fire on them, hitting Maya squarely in the chest several times and depleting her shield almost immediately. She gasped as her, Mordecai and Salvador fell out of the sky towards the deck of the boat.

The three of them landed hard and all appeared to be unconscious, tumbling away from each other. Zer0 digistructed his blade to deflect a blow from a scourge's swing but the scourge was so swift and strong that the deflected blow still knocked Zer0 flat on his back; quick reflexes was all that saved him as the scourge brought his ax over Zer0's head. Zer0's blade caught the scourge's blow in mid-air as the two struggled against each other. Zer0 looked right into the monster's crazed, human eyes behind its mask and heard it sob hideously.

.

Axton turned back to look at the scourge he was facing as it emerged from the broken cabin. It's pale, human face was revealed. The cheeks were smeared with a strange black glue, veins and capillaries were bulging throughout the face but there was no mistaking it: it looked just like Axton without a beard.

Axton stood up and backed away in shock as the hunched-over scourge with _his_ face smiled at him, revealing rotten, black teeth.

.

Tannis watched this from her energy-constructed window.

"That's right, you thieving brute ape", she said. "I own you. _All_ of you. Isn't that right, Gaige?!"

Gaige was strapped to her own metal slab a few dozen feet above Tannis' level, struggling to move away from Cassium as he moved to plunge his syringe into her head.

"Freaking Stoooop!" she screamed as Cassium's needle pierced her temple.


	4. 2X1: Tha World Conquerors, Pt 4

The scourge saw an easy kill. Mordecai laid on his side, facing away from the demonic cyborg. It raised a claw with blades for fingers that could cut through bone like a piece of cake; it halted in place when suddenly a buzzing drone went off in its head. This was a technopathic message from Cassium himself that they were not to kill the vault hunters but to only incapacitate them and prepare them for sedation.

It approached the three fallen vault hunters Mordecai, Salvador and Maya. Mordecai was facing away from the scourge so it was bit of a surprise when he rolled over, facing it with an explosive shotgun in his hands. He blasted it twice in the chest, knocking it backwards and blasting large chunks away from its armor. He stood up as it staggered back and shot it in the head twice more. It fell on its back so he stood over it and blasted it a few more times in the face, obliterating it.

Axton looked his decrepit double in the eyes as he raised his rifle up at the creature and stared at it through its sights. He put six consecutive rounds though it, turning it's head into a pulp. What bewildered him was that the thing didn't so much as flinch or respond to the fact that bullets had turned its head into a bloody mass; Axton was just glad that he didn't have to look at an ugly version of his own face anymore, not minding that a chunk of skull had clipped him in his own face.

The scourge was undeterred unfortunately and lunged forward for him all the same. Axton strafed to the side of it as it swung wildly with its potentially eviscerating claws and dodged as it blindly swung for him again. Thankfully, the scourge rose in the air as it came for him again, trapped inside of a phaselock field. He looked around him and saw that the other two still-living scourge had risen in separate phaselock fields. Maya was rising to her feet with her arms outstretched. Her markings were glowing a blue hue as she strained in concentration.

"Hurry and finish them!" she yelled as the scourge thrashed wildly in their prisons. "They're strong! I don't know how long I can hold them!"

"Explosive takes them down just fine!" shouted Mordecai as he blasted one of them with his shotgun several times, shattering its armor to pieces. "Use that!"

"Works for me!" Axton said, pulling out another rocket launcher. "Bye-bye now!" He blasted his headless scourge with a couple of rockets, smashing its armor and blowing large chunks of the scourge itself away.

Zer0 took out a Torgue-made assault rifle and blasted large holes in the scourge trading blades with him seconds earlier. He obliterated the monster's head, right arm, abdomen and legs, leaving it a complete mess. Zer0 found himself covered in blood and gore as well as a sticky purple goo as the beast fell to the ship in front of him. Water flowed beneath him, splashing his feet as he realized the scourge had smashed a rather deep crater in the ship, causing it to lose its levitation and take on some water from the sea. It was going to sink.

Salvador sat up and looked around. The scourge were dispatched and they had survived but they still had to get into the tower.

"We need to make our move now", he said.

"Damn right", Mordecai agreed.

.

Cassium and Tannis looked down on the travelers through their window. Cassium looked at Tannis with a concerned look on his expressive palette of a face. Tannis caught this.

"We're not worried", Tannis announced with a smirk. "We want them to come, remember?"

.

Maya gathered the others together to get close to her as she created a phaselock field around them.

"Up, up and away?" suggested Axton.

"Shut up", she commanded as she levitated them into the air flew towards the Scourge Tower.

.

It turned out to be a lot farther than it looked at first as they flew towards it. Though they were advancing on it at a decent speed. It made them feel tiny that as they began to enter the bottom entrance to the strange tower, the sides of it seemed to be at least hundred feet away from them on all sides. Whatever the radiation was that was streaming from the structure into the ocean seemed to cease as if Cassium was inviting them in. None of them liked that.

As they ascended inside, it just seemed to be a really high, round interior of nothing but strange rows of body-shaped capsules with a bunch of tubes and wires connecting them to strange, glowing orbs as well as floating rectangular plates of metal. That was the same surrounding environment for hundreds of feet up into the tower as they ascended higher and higher. The place was vast but all it seemed to be was capsules that seemed to occasionally contain people from what they could see. The windows on the capsules were steamed over so they couldn't see the people inside but they could make out silhouettes.

"Not really what I was expecting", admitted Salvador as he held two rocketeer assault rifles in his hands, ready for action.

"I know, right?" Mordecai asked. "A little boring."

"Stay alert, guys", stated a whispering Axton, as if he were worried somebody would hear him. "I don't like this place." He readied his own explosive Vladof Fighter pistol.

A strange anomaly of energy appeared before them as they rose that formed a rectangle with transparent borders that were suspended in mid-air, rising as they did. Images began flashing on the invisible screen to their bewilderment. The levitating theater screen-of-sorts was showing pictures of each of _them_. Mordecai, Zer0, Maya, Axton, Gaige, Salvador and Lilith all unconscious seemingly inside one of the capsules displayed along the walls of the Scourge Tower. Some words then appeared on screen that actually rose with them in a scratchy font that read 'A place for you here with yourselves ….'

The next thing to display on the floating screen was Gaige struggling within her confines and screaming to be let go. She was strapped to a slab of eridian metal like Axton was before her. Though they could strangely hear her screams from the floating window, they could also hear her screams from above them. They looked upwards and saw a platform and bridge jutting out from the wall forty feet up, which the screams seemed to be emanating from.

"She's up there!" Axton yelled. "Can you make it, Maya!"

"Yeah, I'm fine!" she yelled as she ascended again. The window dissipated after that.

"Guys!" Lilith yelled out to them as they started to pass her. "Maya! I'm right here!"

"Lil'!" shouted Mordecai.

Lilith was still entrapped in hardened gel around her body up to her shoulders atop a small platform so she had no chance of moving or doing much of anything on her own. Maya moved everybody towards her and surrounded her in the phaselock field as well.

"How did they get you?" Maya asked her.

"They can disable anybody", she told them. "Even us, Maya. Be careful."

Maya splashed Lilith's small prison with fire, cracking it under the heat. This was enough for Lilith to break out of the rest with a small fire nova. Wide wings of fire spread along her back as she was happy to be free at last.

"Finally!" Lilith shouted. "I'm gonna roast that bitch!"

"Wait!" Axton said. "Who? Who did this to you?"

"Tannis has friggin' lost it!" Lilith said. "Dude, she's working with some friggin' eridian! I'm gonna get her!"

With that, Lilith broke away from Maya's phaselock field and flew upwards to the platform above them at a high speed.

"Lil', wait!" Mordecai yelled after her. "Dammit! Let's go, Maya!"

Maya brought them up to the platform as well and set them down on top of it, where Lilith was waiting. On the bridge towards the wall was Tannis, who was turned away from them, dressed in her black, skin-tight eridian battle suit that covered her body up to above her chest like a full-body tubetop. She turned and faced the vault hunters and they saw that Gaige was behind her, binded to her slab and trembling, unable to speak.

"Doc?" Axton asked, confused. "She's dead, right? I mean, Adam Blitzfield shot her in the head. Or am I tripping? I mean, who am I kidding? I saw one of those things wearing my face. I definitely _am_ tripping."

Tannis smirked as he was talking.

"Ax, it isn't her, man", Salvador said. "We saw the real Tannis. She was buried by the eridians on this world. Just like she would have wanted."

"Then who the hell is that?" Axton asked.

"That's a good question", Maya said to 'Tannis'. "What the hell are you?"

"Me?" Tannis asked innocently, pointing to her own chest, pretending to ponder the answer to the question. "Oh, I'm Dr. Patricia Tannis. Researcher, student and expert in many fields of science. My most recent and consistent professions have been archaeologist and historian. I worked for the Dahl Corporation until they all but abandoned me. I then came upon the likes of you. Worst days of my life. You stole everything from me and made it worthless. Now, I'm going to steal your lives."

"Let's just kill this bitch", Maya said. "She's not Tannis."

Eight scourge flew down towards them as they prepared to fire on Tannis, throwing off their game a bit.

One of them landed right on top of Lilith, pinning her to the ground with it claws trying to close around her neck. She knocked it off of her with a forceful fire nova. It landed close to the edge in front of her. She then entered into her transparent phasewalk state and ran towards it at full-speed, ramming it with her shoulder as it got to its feet. She flung it hard into the wall behind it, breaking some of the capsules and shattering some of its armor. It free-fell to the bottom, hitting more than a few more capsules along the way.

Salvador aimed upwards as a scourge flew above his head with his explosive rocketeer, he missed it as he zoomed past him so fast and went straight for Axton, attempting to take him off of his feet. Axton saw this just in time and combat rolled out of the way. He placed a Sabre Turret on the ground as he landed. He then rolled inside of the phalanx shield as another scourge descended down upon the shield but banged against it harmlessly, unable to penetrate it.

Axton reached out to it and mimed pointing a gun at it and firing with his right index finger and thumb.

"Bang-bang", he said as his turret turned and took aim at the scourge, blasting it square in the chest with a rocket; it was sent hurtling into the wall like the other scourge had been dispatched and tumbled towards the bottom.

Mordecai took aim with his explosive shotgun and blasted one of the scourge in the side of the face, badly damaging it. He then looked to his right as Cassium landed beside him, looming high over him. Tannis saw this from her spot upon the bridge and laughed, anticipating what was about to happen.

"Ah", she yelled out, preparing to introduce him, "my new colleague, Cassium! He has quite a temper; but you shouldn't blame him for what he's about to do to you! You can't really hate him! He doesn't have a 'human' morality! He's not even human! To hate him for that would be … _inhumane_ if you really think about it!"

Mordecai immediately turned his shotgun on Cassium but the eridian scientist quickly fired a eternal spark from an artificial source within his palms that shot through Mordecai's shotgun, giving a powerful jolt that stunned him, paralyzing him momentarily. Cassium used one steely hand to clutch Mordecai by the throat and lifted him off of his feet. He then turned and flung Mordecai through one of the capsules along the wall, breaking the glass and putting him partially inside of it. Mordecai hung there and swiftly lost consciousness.

Zer0 saw this and drew his digi-blade, making a beeline for Cassium. It would be his first time battling another eridian for many years but he welcomed the challenge.

Cassium turned towards Zer0 and stomped on the ground with his self-designed boots, creating a powerful aimed shockwave towards Zer0 that the warrior managed to somersault over. When Zer0 came back over, he flung several elemental kunai at Cassium that should have hit him. To Zer0's displeasure, Cassium jaunted away from the kunai at lightning-quick speed. They embedded harmlessly into the metal where he would have been. As Zer0 landed on his feet, he found himself blindsided and knocked over onto his left side by Cassium's concussive heat beam. This left him badly burned along most of his body as his suit was strongly sizzling.

Maya noticed this as she put down the scourge she was fighting with several blasts from her Boreantor shotgun to run over and phaselock Cassium. He simply allowed himself to float there, not reacting at all. He didn't even squirm when Maya gave him a shower, washing his body with acid, slag and fire over and over inside the field. He simply turned towards her and gave the same black, blank slate of a face.

Axton was sitting inside of his phalanx, fending off three scourge, whom had formed energy-constructed gatling cannons and were attempting to tear into his phalanx. From within his phalanx, he blasted them with the Evil Smasher, eventually shooting two of them out of the air.

.

Salvador, meanwhile, noticed that while Lilith was working on killing the other scourge that Tannis was alone guarding Gaige, seemingly without weapons of any kind. So, he gathered up his cojones and his rocketeer rifles and made a dead sprint for her. Tannis knew this would occur at some point.

Metal tendrils descended from her body, through her ribcage as he approached, though the metal coating quickly began to crumble and dissipate in shavings. What was underneath were tendrils of superhot, Cassium-invented red energy he called the Casseiya element, named after himself of course. Her casseiya coils shot out for Salvador, piercing into his flesh easily. One shot for his arm, separating his right shoulder and wriggling out of the other side. Another shot through his left abdomen out through his back. Two more coiled around his torso, burning into him there. With the coils, she lifted him high into the air above her and laughed up at him.

"Wow", she said with a whistle. "Good job, vault hunter. You fell for my trap or as our mutual friend would put it, 'you activated my trap card'.

Salvador gritted and clenched his teeth shut to try to keep from screaming during his elevated impalement. He eventually failed though and screamed out in excruciating, horrifying pain.

"Good try, though", Tannis mocked as she swung him around on the casseiya casually. "Nobody told me how fun this would be; you got suckered in so wonderfully!"

Lilith saw this and flew right for Tannis under phasewalk. Tannis, knowing Lilith for a long time and seeing her tactics in action, saw through this. Another rope of casseiya slapped Lilith in the face even through her phasewalk and knocked her out of the air. Lilith landed flat on her back, shocked as she had never been successfully attacked while in phasewalk. She then lurched forward, grunted and hocked up blood because the rope that had knocked her out of the air had pierced her through her stomach, pinning her to the ground and searing her insides. Lilith's eyes glowed red with fire as she tried to fight off the pain and the burning.

"Not a joke anymore, am I?" asked Tannis. 

.

Cassium nonchalantly raised a single palm and fired a beam of his own casseiya particles at Maya that parted her phaselock field around it and hit her squarely in the chest. The blast took her off of her feet and knocked her right off of the platform-bridge area. She landed amongst the capsules twenty feet below, breaking the glass. She groggily turned to look at the contents of the glass. This jolted her awake; the body inside was hers, a cold, wet double of her own body lying within the capsule. The vision and touch of the dead flesh freaked her out enough that she unknowingly flinched away and fell off the capsule, falling even deeper down the rabbit hole through the tower.

.

"Hey, Lilith!" Tannis yelled at her. "Lilith! Are you listening to me?"

Lilith struggled to raise her head to look at that cloned bitch Tannis.

"I always hated _you_ more than anybody else!" Tannis said with a smirk. "You know that right? 'Oh, look at me. Sirens are powerful because they're so hot'. Ugh. Made me want to barf; actually I did a few times after I talked to you. You were insufferable. That's why when I killed you all after we came through the doorway, I saved you for last."

.

.

After Tannis had seen her own corpse in the cave, she began to cry to himself, wondering how things had turned out so horribly. When a copy of Tannis had been remade by accident or for whatever reason the eridian predecessors had seen fit, the portion of Tannis' brain that been destroyed had to be replaced with _something_. When Humpty Dumpty got put back together again, nobody ever said he was put back together perfectly as he once was. Some cracks are going to be left, right?

She looked over at the vault hunters around her. It was _their_ fault. They had ruined everything and then they had left her to be murdered by that psychopath. To top it all off, they had a chance to keep him from killing her and they had stood there; they did _nothing_. They needed to repent for that.

She woke up before any of them and she found that she could move before any of them as well. So, she went to find the biggest rock she could find, carry and wield. She went over to them, one by one and smashed their heads into mush. She thought she would feel some kind of apprehension for them, some kind of nostalgia for the faux-companionship that they used to share but she found she didn't feel anything but contempt anymore. She wanted them gone.

The only survivor near the end was Lilith, who watched as she bludgeoned Maya and Zer0 to death, both of whom were hopelessly paralyzed. Maya was alarmed and tried to yell to get her to stop. Zer0 was his usual peaceful, boring self which pissed off Tannis to no end. Lilith watched all of this and actually began to cry and blabber.

She was in some kind of denial, Tannis theorized, and refused to believe it could end that way after everything she had gone through. Tannis dropped the rock and leaned over the pathetic siren. Lilith began to question her.

"Why are you doing this?" Lilith asked over and over, between tears. "Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?"

Tannis reached down to Lilith and wrapped her hands around Lilith's throat, trying her damnedest to crush Lilith's esophagus from all sides. Her eyes went wide and bulged out as she fruitlessly struggled a losing fight for survival as the rest of her body was motionless. Tannis strained with all of her might, not letting go until long after Lilith gave her last convulsion and ceased fighting.

The hatred of 'Dr. Patricia Tannis' didn't die just like that. As the vault hunters regenerated into new bodies, Tannis was right there to kill them again; and again; and again. This went on for a while. For days, Tannis barely ever ventured from the cave to eat or drink. The only thing she lived for was to kill vault hunters. The same vault hunters over and over. Every time, she would leave Lilith for last and every time, Lilith would give a varying rendition of her 'whys'. Tannis came to relish and wait for this. The only happiness that Tannis could acquire came from Lilith asking her 'why'. She was too afraid to seek out a vault as she knew she wouldn't survive any threat that might be posed to her, though she was always better off on her own. That is, until an eridium mad scientist called Cassium came for her.

.

.

"You always asked me why I did it", Tannis told her as she held her down with her coil. "Please do it again. Ask me that one question. Ask … me … why."

.

Maya managed to land on top of one of the metal slabs that were turned horizontally. Her momentum carried her over to the edge but she caught it and hung on for dear life, though she was slipping fast. It wasn't ideal for gripping like that. On top of that, Cassium landed right on the slab as well on his feet. She was in pain and disoriented from the fall so she couldn't concentrate enough to phaselock.

"Son of a …", Maya muttered as she reached up to try to get some more grip but failing to do so.

Cassium began to approach the edge towards her, when Zer0 landed on his back, smashing him to the ground face-first. Zer0 took his digiblade and drove it right through Cassium's back, impaling him to the ground with a scream. Zer0 then tumbled over to the side of him and didn't move from there.

"Zer0…", she whispered as she scratched her way across the metal surface of the slab, finding a groove to dig into. She then threw a leg over and used that to roll over the top, next to the two eridians. She laid there flat on her back, breathing hard for a few seconds, trying to get it under control.

.

"Do it!" demanded Tannis of Lilith.

Lilith spit blood in response, forever fiery.

"Fine, I'll just make you suffer for a while more", said Tannis.

She was unprepared for Axton who ran up on the bridge carrying his own Sabre turret in his hands above his head by the bipod as it unleashed several rockets in quick succession at Tannis. They hit their mark, drawing a loud gasp from her just before they sent her flying into the slab carrying Gaige.

She was forced to release Salvador, who was unconscious and Lilith, who was in intense pain as she writhed on the ground. The casseiya coils retreated back to Tannis and coiled protectively around her body as she sat forward on her knees, trying to recapture her bearings. She wasn't harmed too much actually as Cassium's experiments had hardened her skin though she had find her bearings from the concussive force of the blasts.

Axton dropped his turret, where it redeployed into its pod before he went to check on his fallen friends at first, but was mainly concerned about releasing Gaige. He checked on Salvador first, seeing that he was out but checked his carotid pulse on his neck to make sure he was alive. When he was satisfied with Sal's life status, he went over to Lilith who was still conscious but hurt badly.

"Go…get…Gaige", she told him, which he immediately went about doing.

"Ax", Gaige called out to him as he ran to her; he struggled trying to yank the metallic coils entrapping her arms. He reached into his storage deck and pulled out a Vladof-manufactured fighter pistol.

"I'm going to try not to put a hole in you", he said as he aimed at one set of coils. "Keyword: _try_."

He aimed and blasted it several times, severing it. He reached over and yanked it way, freeing that arm. He then moved over and took care of the other side. He then pulled her down from the slab as she was free and put an arm around her. They began to walk away until one of Tannis' casseiya coils slinked in between them, wrapped Axton and flung him ten feet away onto the platform facefirst.

Tannis then stood up and yanked Gaige towards her by grabbing her by one of her pigtails.

"Where do you think you're going, bitch?" Tannis asked her, making Gaige yelp from her hard tug.

Ax stood back up and re-engaged her, approaching her as he aimed with his fighter.

"Let her go, doc", he ordered.

Tannis wrapped a coil around Gaige's throat, burning her and drawing a gasp.

"Isn't this familiar?" Tannis asked. "Little Gaige is afraid for her life much like I was in her position. What's it gonna be, Ax? You couldn't save _me_.You going to play the hero or will you screw up yet again?"

Gaige reached out and drove her right elbow right into Tannis' gut, staggering and stunning her enough to escape from her coil and grasp. Gaige backed away from and turned around before she delivered a stiff uppercut to Tannis with her digistruct claw, something that could crush stone. Gaige and Axton both watched Tannis stand up straight as if she were forced that way before plummeting to the floor straight down on her back. Axton knew Tannis was knocked out for at least a few seconds. No way would she have landed like that otherwise.

A few seconds later, however, Tannis leaned over on her sides with her coils draped over her spitting out quite a bit of blood and some teeth. Gaige backed away towards Axton as Tannis gingerly reached up to her mouth to touch it. Her lower jaw seemed to jut out over to the left, creating a slight bulge in her cheek. Gaige had broken her jaw. Tannis visibly winced from the pain before she looked up at Gaige and Axton. There was so much hatred there that they felt like they had been slapped.

She scooted away from them as her normally green eyes illuminated with a pinkish color, iris and all.

"Kill them all", she muttered low through her broken jaw as she held her mouth together with her hands.

Axton and Gaige heard the rattling above their heads as more scourge deployed from the top of the tower and flew down towards them.

"Explosive", he told Gaige. "Explosive works."

"What?" Gaige asked, confused at first before she nodded with understanding. "Oh, gotcha." She took her digistruct claw and deployed Deathtrap. She then took out a Torgue assault rifle and blasted Deathtrap with it a few times. This gave Deathtrap a visible, bright-orange aura and empowered him with Torgue-awesome explosiveness.

"Go make me proud, DT!" she ordered, pointing up at the scourge. Deathtrap immediately ascended and blasted clean through the closest descending scourge with a laser. He then used his claws to reach through the hole and rip it in half. He grabbed another by the arms and flung it so hard at the wall that it punctured through the wall and fell outside of the tower.

Deathtrap flew upwards past some of the other scourge and released a powerful explosive nova that destroyed most of them as well as a large amount of the capsules adjacent to it and the reactor equipment above it. The result was an array of different dyed explosions and fiery chunks of metal and red liquid raining down throughout the tower. Gaige took her turn at the destruction, using her assault rifle to send some rapid-fire bombs at the walls towers, blowing big chunks out of it. They were tearing the structure down around them, piece by piece.

"Hell yeah!" screamed Axton, throwing his arms up in excitement. "That's what I'm talking about right there!"

Tannis looked up, watching all of this with wide, distressed eyes. She looked at Gaige and sent her casseiya out to wrap around her wrists, to burn and stop her. Gaige yelled out. Axton moved over and with his Evil Smasher blasted Tannis repeatedly in the chest. She released Gaige and faltered to shield herself with her arms and coils as Axton continued his assault. Gaige took her own Torgue assault rifle and joined in his barrage. They stood side by side, blasting Tannis across the floor into the same slab that she held Gaige. They stopped when they realized she had become smoldering heap, missing an arm and both legs. Her body had actually burst open and began smoking on the inside.

"You think she's dead?" Gaige asked Axton, drawing a look from him before they both burst in laughter from the ridiculous question.

Salvador raised his head as much as he could and muttered some curses in Truxican towards her corpse. He then raised a middle finger in her honor.

They all felt a lurch as the tower's levitation faltered. Cassium's machinery had been damaged by Deathtrap, who returned to Gaige finally. The tower began to slip and fall towards the ocean.

"Crap, that isn't good", commented Axton before he went to go check on Lilith, while Gaige checked on Salvador. Maya returned to the platform with Zer0 and Mordecai in tow within her phaselock field. She released them both atop of the platform and ran over to the others.

Both Lilith and Salvador were in pretty bad shape but Sal was closer so she tended to him first. She placed her palms over his entrance wounds and exerted her healing power. A white light filled the cavities, reforming the flesh and tissue and closed both wounds. She then ran over to Lilith and placed both hands over her stomach wound while Salvador sat up choking.

All around them, large pieces of debris were falling; some of it onto the platform. Waterfalls of red liquid, substance of Cassium's creation, spilled from the top of his tower all the way to the bottom from large, ruptured tanks. It looked more like wine than blood but the thick smell of it was almost unbearable, making them cough and see dots. That's because it was a compound of many eridian elements, when combined shared many traits with radiation.

"We have to get out of here!" Mordecai shouted.

Maya placed her palms over Lilith's abdomen wound, causing her to reach down and grasp Maya's wrists.

"Roland…" she murmured.

"Not yet", answered Maya, shaking her head. She regrew everything damaged inside Lilith and her skin. Lilith sat up suddenly, inhaling sharply and yanking Maya towards her by the arms unconsciously.

Large pieces of one of Cassium's tanks smashed the bridge connecting the platform to the wall, causing the platform to tip over towards the tower's depths.

"Okaaaay!" shouted Gaige. "Here we goooo! I always hated rollercoasteeeeers!"

She started screaming, as did Mordecai and Axton as all of them began to free fall down into the depths of the sinking, one-hundred plus foot long, floating tower.

It was comparable to skydiving, only there was the falling metal above them that they had to worry about.

Somewhere near the bottom Maya formed a wide phaselock field, hoping to slow their descent.

.

Salvador woke up back in the water, feeling its calm, smooth wade as he slowly bobbed with it, clutching a large girder shaped metal pillar. He was definitely grateful for it.

He looked up as Deathtrap slowly hovered nearby, carrying Gaige in his arms.

"Whatcha doin', losa?" she asked him in a faux-Guido accent.

He grunted in annoyance as he pulled the pillar tighter to himself.

.

Maya calmly treaded water apart from them, watching the sinking, lopsided scourge tower; it slid dramatically into the depths like a fallen sea monster at the end of a swashbuckling adventure novel. The water immediately surrounding it sizzled, something that worried her. Would they catch whatever toxicity that came along with Cassium's experiments? Maybe they already had. She turned away to see an approaching ominous shape approaching them from the mist.

"I've been watching you", Physis' astral projection said to her. "You defeated Cassium; something that hasn't been done for a long, long time. We are more grateful than you'll ever know."

Maya watched as the shape revealed itself to be a group of Phyzoa ships, coming to retrieve them.

"The vaults are yours if you're willing to make the journey", Physis told her.

.

Hours later, the vault hunters returned with the Phyzoa back to their city, where they partook in a wild celebration. The phyzoa invited the warriors to try some of their native food and drink. The group danced and ate by a ring of purple heat-producing embers that they figured to be the eridian version of fire, though it was actually more an intoxicating element that encouraged positive emotions in minds of those nearby. While they partied, a band of musicians played some music nearby on energy-based instruments that again inhibited the positive emotions, like drugs almost. Axton really liked a drink called himoa that tasted like a really sweet strawberry-flavored wine. Lilith found herself eating some delicious meat as she was seated next to an eridian warrior on a stone bench nearby.

"Oh my god, that is sooo good!" Lilith said, as she reached for another crustacean shell and cracked it in half to get to the spicy, stripped meat inside. "What do you call this?"

The eridian warrior seated next to her on the stone bench laughed and put a goblet of the himoa to her lips which she gladly drank from. "This is scuttler meat! A sea animal that looks like your kind mixed with crustacean!"

Lilith looked at him and burst into laughter.

"What are you talking about?" she asked, playfully putting her tattooed palm over his hard face. She didn't even mind when he seductively pulled her hand off and kissed the back of it, making the design glow. "Are you trying to confuse me? 'Cuz that won't make me like you bet …. Oh my god!"

She suddenly remembered being kidnapped by the giant, half-man, half-crab creature and realized she had just eaten a humanoid species. Did that make her a cannibal? The implications were blowing her mind … for about three seconds.

"Are you okay?" the warrior said, putting a hand on Lilith's shoulder for a second with a concerned expression.

Lilith's look of despair quickly led to her laughing out loud again.

"Crab-man tastes goooood!" she cooed as she leaned forward into the eridian's arms, laughing uncontrollably.

.

While her friends had their fun outside, Maya walked the halls of a nearby temple with open arches for doorways. She was wearing a welcome change of clothes while her usual attire was being cleansed. She surprised herself by wearing a dress for the first time since her time on Athenas. It was really more an eridian gown as Physis explained. It was a thin, dark-platinum fabric with the texture of satin. It flowed on her and behind her as its length in the back flowed above the ground without much wind at all. She thought that was pretty cool. She wore low heels with straps that buckled around her ankles like tall sandals. She thought she would feel uneasy in the dress as she was naked underneath but she strangely felt at ease and comfortable.

"You can keep that", stated Physis as she approached her.

"Really?" asked Maya as she sipped an intoxicating wine from the goblet in her hand.

"Yes, of course", the eridian binder said as she stopped next to Maya. "You look like you need it. We'll pack it with your essentials for your travels."

"Thanks", Maya said uneasily as she took another gulp. She saw Mordecai go up to the Phyzoa musicians and talk with them. He picked up one of their whistling instruments and began to play an old song he used to play for Bloodwing.

"You and your friends have been fighting for a long time now, haven't you?" Physis asked.

"That hard to tell? We look so ridiculous when we don't."

"They're having a good time. Why don't you?"

Because Maya still didn't really trust Physis but she didn't want to say that.

"Somebody has to watch them and make sure they don't do anything_ too_ stupid", Maya answered with a wink.

"Even in a dress, you're at arms", observed Physis, seeing right through Maya's paranoia. "Well, from one matriarch to another, it really puts everybody at ease if you show that even you can relax sometimes."

"Actually, I'm curious about something."

"Yes?"

"These vaults. Can you tell me more about them?"

"Yes, of course."

Physis opened her right palm in front of Maya's eyes. She opened her mouth and a water-like substance poured through until it formed itself into a perfectly shaped sphere, levitating above Physis' open palm. Inside of it, a vision formed. It was of a bright, beautiful ocean that reminded Maya of the waters on Athena. A fleet of large hovering ships raced across it.

"These are Vendarran waters", Physis told her. "Territory of the Vendarr Natures, a technological superior organization of our people. They are hostile to any outsiders within their lands and have combated with Cassium many times. They have proven far more successful than we have been."

The vision of Physis shifted to a strange vortex in the middle of the ocean. The strange thing was that the center of the vortex was nothing but empty space; it looked like an empty hole in the middle of the ocean.

"Distorted Isle", Physis called it. "This is where Vendarr has conducted their experiments. They protect the ancient vault there, stated to hold unimaginable power. It is stated that whoever holds the power within will be nigh-unbeatable in battle. That is one vault I know."

"You know of another?" Maya asked excitedly.

"All the way across the world in the opposite direction is place where _nobody_ goes", Physis said.

The vision shifted to a strange gray fog. Suddenly, a strange tentacle shot out, lined with black pincers that seemed like it would break the orb. It even made Maya jump.

"The Nigh-Tangible Mists", Physis named the area. Maya watched as the crude-looking octopus-like monster worked its body and tentacles to swim … mid-air. She watched as the tentacles shot out and yanked a flying fish right in front of it into its sharp beak and suckled on its flesh noisily. A school of silver dollar fish with long feelers flew through the air next to it.

"Fogs so thick you'll suffocate in it", Physis went on, "filled with a dead light during the day and depressing abyss at nightfall. It is home to anomalistic properties that change physics in ways that surprise and confuse even me, there have been few that dared ventured within and none that have returned."

Maya saw a hovering shark-like creature flying over some rocks with sharp, sword-like blades protruding from its under belly and over the top of its long fins.

"However, there is a vault there", Physis declared as a rock wall came into view with the ever-familiar vault symbol carved into it. "Nobody knows what is held within but all believe it must be extremely valuable to warrant such dangers."

The orb then dissolved before Maya, forcing her to readjust herself as she was so drawn in that she practically drooled.

"So, which vault are you willing to risk everything for?" asked Physis.

"I want them both", was Maya's simple answer.

.

Salvador walked outside of the Phyzoa caves to take a leak. He finished the rest of his drink as he finished up and remembered something being away from the intoxicating embers of the Phyzoa. Tannis would regenerate into another body most likely as she died. Who knew if she would be evil or not. She could be coming for them or maybe he could remind her that she was a friend of theirs at one time. He stumbled over to their Regenerative Cave with a flashlight in hand.

"Oh, dooooc!" he yelled out as he went to the spot where they appeared. "Hey dooooc!" There was nothing there but the flies and no sign that anybody had been there for quite some time. He suddenly felt somber. He tried to shake off the bad feeling he was having but he remembered that mostly a bad idea to fight one's own intuition.

.

Cassium's ship pulled away from his Scourge Tower remains. It was automatically dispatched to its location in the event that the tower was destroyed. Cassium, now fully healed walked along the decks past some of his empowered scourge servants. He walked down the steps into the lower cabins where he could hear his charge Tannis howl miserably.

She was bonded into a sustainment pod in excruciatingly horrible pain as her body was doused in the burning casseiya element. Cassium was attempting to replace her missing parts with something that was not flesh or even remotely organic but also toxic to humans. She couldn't even scream properly because her jaw was broken and still jutting out towards her cheek but it's not like Cassium cared how much pain she was in anyway. That was their deal. Cassium reveals to Tannis his immortal knowledge of everything eridian and he gets to experiment on her in whatever way he desires. That was their deal.


	5. 2X2: Fantasies of a Violent Heaven, pt 1

**If this was a movie or a series, it would be sooooo over-budget!**

* * *

.

"Hey, guys!" Gaige yelled as she waved her arms at the others, clamoring for their attention. "Watch this!"

She stood at the edge of their hovering ship, stripped down to her bra and panties, looking to have some fun on their otherwise boring long trip. She was preparing to do a back somersault off of their ship into the water as the ship was moving.

Maya noticed this and got up to try to stop her. She held out a finger to motion her to stop.

"Gaige!" she yelled. "Gaige! No!"

"Ah-!" Gaige yelled, pretending to jump up only to stop, teetering a bit. She did it again, trying to make Maya flinch. "Ahhhh!"

She then leapt backwards and did a backflip in the water as the ship continued to accelerate without her. Maya sighed and ran a hand down her face in frustration.

The group were on another phyzoan hover ship, treading through the Nyaos sea on bearings towards the Distorted Isle. The weather in the region they were approaching seemed to be more mild than the area they had welcomed them to the mysterious planet. The sun was only fifty-eight point nine degrees Celsius. Thankfully, Phyzoa had given them a few vials of sun oils that they found worked a lot better than suntan lotion. The trip had been ongoing for six days and though the phyzoa had packed them a few satchels of food and filled several waterbags for them, the vault hunters were quickly running out of both provisions.

Another way they passed the time was testing some of the weapons that the phyzoa were kind enough to give them. One of them was an e-tech rifle crafted better than any they had previously seen, something Zer0 referred to as '_real_ e-tech'. On first glance, it looked like a re-skinned a Vladof Renegade rifle but it was crafted out of eridium somehow and even produced a purple aura when fired that made them question whether it was safe to wield. The phyzoans called it the Poltergeist. It looked very human in craftsmanship in almost everything except its materials and what it used for a flash on the tip. Instead of a slim open end like most rifles, they couldn't help but notice that the Poltergeist instead had a glowing crystal dagger at the end. Not as a bayonet under the flash, but actually attached to the barrel like the ammo was really going to shoot out of there.

Mordecai decided to test this thing so he turned towards the sea and picked out some passing sea birds. The birds on Nyaos seemed to be featherless and slimy to their discovery but they were huge as well. They were ten feet long from beak to tail for the most part with really long wingspans. He aimed the Poltergeist up at them as they passed overhead. The most assistance he had was an ironsight so he had to rely on his skill and intuition to lead them into his range.

When he was satisfied with his shot, he opened fire on them. They saw that the Poltergeist fired energy-constructed daggers of sorts, shaped like the dagger on the tip on the rifle and that it was rapid-fire. What delighted them was the daggers ripped into the birds, not like bullets but like knives. Each knife ripped off another piece of the birds, slicing them into pieces. When Mordecai lowered the rifle, the birds fell into the ocean squawking and large chunks of their wings fell in with them. Something like that would rip a man to pieces.

The other vault hunters cheered and clapped Mordecai on the shoulders, but he didn't feel so good about himself. All he could see when he shot down those birds was his old buddy, Bloodwing.

.

At one point Axton pulled out his ECHO recorder and began walking around the boat, recording some of the stupid stuff they were doing. Gaige kept leaping from the deck so they had to keep stopping so she could get back on, but Zer0 was getting tired of this. So, at one point Zer0 didn't stop when Gaige did a cannonball into the water. Gaige swam after the boat for over two hundred meters because Zer0 absolutely refused to stop until she learned her lesson. Although she got tired relatively quickly, she didn't stop swimming and really impressed the other vault hunters. Eventually, Zer0 let her back on and Gaige promptly went into the lower cabins and fell asleep. All of this was captured on Axton's ECHO.

Another event captured for his ECHO documentary was his interview with Lilith, who was sun tanning on the deck on her stomach without a bra on but was lying down casually all the same. Axton approached her and sat down, trying to think of a way to ask what he was going to ask.

"Are you seriously sitting there right now, pervert?" she asked without even looking at him.

"**Quick**", Axton said, purposely changing his voice to a deep baritone to mask it. "**Who am I**?"

"That doucher Axton", answered Lilith, still not looking.

"Wow, what are you?" he asked. "Psychic?"

"No", she said, turning slightly towards him but still covering her breasts with the ground. "I just think 'which one of us doesn't respect people' and lo and behold …"

"Ooooh", Axton howled, cupping his mouth. "I see what you're trying to do. You're trying to hurt me but really, if you think about it, _none_ of us respect people. Look at how many people we kill."

"See, that's where you're wrong, commando", she answered. "I respect people. I just don't respect a-holes."

"So I guess I'm the …", trailed off Axton, pointing to himself quizzically.

Lilith nodded with a smile.

"See, I _loooove _you siren girls", he said. "You're just so much _fun_!"

Axton crouched down and laid on his belly next to her.

"Can I ask you a serious question?" Axton asked. "Who wins in a fight? You or Maya?"

Lilith mulled it over, biting her lip before looking over at him.

"Seriously?" she asked.

"Seriously."

"To the death?"

"No holds barred. Slag balls. Phoenix wings. Phaselocks. Phase … walks. Fire Novas. All of that stuff."

"I'd kick her ass any day of week and twice on holidays", Lilith declared, "and she _knows_ this."

"Oooh", he said, fanning himself. He then raised his hips and reached down to fan his groin. "It's getting hot out herre."

"Okay", Lilith said with a chuckle, "you can leave now. I gotta put my shirt back on."

"Wait, one more question!" Ax said.

"What?" she asked.

"Off the record."

"What?"

"You and that eridian were getting pretty cozy last night", he said. "Did you guys … you know … bang or something?"

"What?" she shouted. "That's just … like … hmph…why would … you even ask that? Know what? You need to leave … like … now!"

She was shuffling away from him, covering her boobs as she looked around for her shirt.

"Duuuude!" Axton scoffed as he pointed. "You're totally red right now! Are you blushing! Lilith's bluuuuushiiing! You banged an eridian! That's so hot! Wow! I think I'm in love with you right now!"

.

A day later, Axton and Salvador were getting totally bored, bro, so they started shooting their guns up at the sky randomly for no reason at all. Both of them were shirtless and smoking cigars as they fired rapid-firing assault rifles randomly at the ocean. They were doing man-things, in other words. Salvador even showed Axton his method of carrying the weight of two assault rifles and firing them in a gunzerk-type motion.

"They do know that there's no ammo for those guns on this planet, don't they?" Zer0 asked Mordecai, who was standing next to him as he steered the ship along its path.

"I think they do", Mordecai said, thinking it over. "I mean, I _hope_ they do. I hope they're not _that _stupid."

"You gotta kneel down and kind of bend down at the knees", Salvador instructed Axton, demonstrating this as he crouched down at the knees.

"Like this?" Axton asked he mimicked the action.

"Si", said Salvador. "Then you gotta treat that second gun like a second ****. You take care of your first ****, right?"

"We're quite attached, yes", confirmed Axton.

"Well, you're not going to mistreat and neglect your own ****", Salvador said. "Man up and use that ****. Just ugggggh!"

As Salvador grunted, he fired both assault rifles in spraying arcs across the sky. When he stopped, he brought them down slowly with both barrels smoking. He was breathing hard like he just finished a work-out.

"If you do it right, you have a hard-on", Salvador said. "That's how you know your balls have dropped. It ain't even about aim, mijo; it about you looking some puto in the eye and knowing he got some little pencil-prick gun …"

"**A bandit gun**!" both Salvador and Axton said at the same time before laughing about it.

"Anyway", Salvador continued, "the idiot realize it's over when he sees that he has some pencil-prick _bandit _gun … and you got this double-stuffed, double-stacked ****. How can he win? He can't. That's how I win every single time. I bring the bigger prick. Now, imagine that and shoot those cannons."

Axton leaned down, using his legs to hold those rifles as he readied to blast the sky.

"Now, remember to grunt like you're finishing on your opponent", Sal went on. "Because as soon as you finish somebody, you own that. You are the bigger man! So prove it!"

"Fake a grunt, huh?" asked Axton. "Well, why didn't you say so? I'm the king of that! Oh, hell yeeeeaaaaah!"

Axton leaned down and fired both of his assault rifles at the sky until they got hot and started smoking. By the time he was done, his hands were tingling and shaking. He dropped the guns and beat on his chest.

"Dude!" he shouted. "I totally feel it! All man! I feel like just running over to nearest inanimate object and start humping it! Maya is so lucky she isn't out here right now! So is Gaige and frankly, that's a little weird! She's kind of like a daughter or a little sister so I immediately regret saying that but STILL!"

Axton and Salvador shared a laugh and couple of howls at the sky. Zer0 watched all of this and just shook his head at the idiots he called friends sometimes if they were lucky.

"The only thing we're missing are some burgers and some beers!" yelled Axton in regret, making their laughter die down a bit. "You know, some dogs on the grill. That would make this a complete experience. The water's beautiful, though, so that's kind of nice."

This caused both Axton and Salvador to watch the peaceful flow of the ocean for a while. That is, until Sal pulled out a grenade from his storage deck. He pulled out the pin and flung it twenty yards away. A second after sinking into the water, its explosion created a decently high geyser of seawater like a whale's blowhole. They erupted in laughter.

"Hehe", chuckled Ax. "It's like the water farted!"

.

The good times didn't last forever, however. A good twenty minutes later …

"So, let me get this straight", said Axton to Salvador as he exhaled smoke from his cigar towards his miniature friend, "what you're saying is because you have a little bit more hair on your chest, that … that makes you more of a man than _me_?"

Salvador was also shirtless and smoking a cigar like Axton. Axton was physically fit and had at _most _twelve percent body fat, but Salvador had the body of a dwarf bodybuilder. Sal also had hair all over his arms, chest, stomach and even some on his back. Axton barely had any on his chest.

Sal took a long drag on his cigar before blowing some of the embers off of the tip.

"S_i_", he said simply with a shrug, "that's exactly what I'm saying; yes."

"Well, them's fighting words … _Juan Rambo_!"

Axton pointed one his black gloved hands at Sal's face, who simply slapped Axton's hand aside.

"See, now you've gone too far!" Salvador yelled at him. "I told you to never call me that! Salvador always!"

"Come on, guys", Lilith cooed off to the side. She really couldn't care less; they were just being too loud for her liking. She had laid to do more sunbathing. She didn't think she could be sunburnt, given her powers.

"Arm wrestling match!" shouted Axton, challenging Sal right then and there. "Right here! Right now! For all the marbles!"

Salvador walked right up to Axton and gave a little shove in the stomach, knocking him back a few feet.

"See, I always thought you were stupid but now I realize … you're _really_ retarded!" he said to Ax. "Let's go!"

"Wow", said Gaige, who was watching gleefully with her arms crossed. "This is really happening. Okay, I'm totally judging."

"Let's make this interesting!" yelled Axton, leaning down to get in Salvador's face.

"I like interesting!" Salvador shot back, putting his forehead against Axton's and headbutting him a bit.

"Five hundred stacks!" Axton yelled, slapping his hands together. "To the victor!"

"That's how a woman bets!" Salvador answered back. "No offense Lilith, Gaige and Maya!"

Lilith, who was on the upper deck behind Salvador, had her back to them and was standing up to put her shirt back on because they were being too loud.

"Ummm, offense taken", she said over her shoulder.

"Five million!" Salvador yelled, extending a hand to seal the deal.

"Oh!" Axton yelled with a chuckle. "You're _on_ like Cheech and Chong smoking a bong riding Donkey Kong in a fight with _King_ Mong!"

"Why am I friends with you?" asked Maya, who had come up from the lower cabins and was shaking her head. "You're such a lame."

"Hush your pretty mouth, Maya" Axton said as he raised his arms and flexed his biceps at shoulder level before rolling his arms forward in a cocky fashion. "I'm glad you're here though. Pay close attention. It's _go _time for this idiot."

Axton then dropped forward to the deck in the push-up position. He did a few push-ups, bouncing up and clapping his hands on each time up. He was in 'I'm the prettiest girl at the prom, heehee' mode. He then slid onto his belly and put his right arm out, ready for Salvador.

Salvador casually slid down to his belly and eased his palm into Axton's grasp. His hands were huge and felt like flesh-covered bricks in Axton's hand.

"I hope you're right-handed", said Axton, "because I am and we're not having a second round left-handed so deal with it."

"Ambidextrous, bitch", said Salvador with a playful fake-kissing of his lips, drawing _ooh_'s and _ohhhhh_'s from the crowd around them.

Gaige flopped down on her belly between and placed her hands over the both of theirs.

"Let's keep this a good, clean arm-wrestling match", she said, looking back and forth between the two of them. "No goosing."

"Of course not", Salvador said.

"This is over!" proclaimed Ax.

"On your mark!" yelled Gaige. "Get set! Arm-wrestle!"

She moved her hands from their fists and scooted away. Everybody closed in on the two, yelling and cheering for their favorites. Salvador was winning from the beginning, slowly but surely pulling Axton's wrist over to the ground with minimal effort. He smacked Axton's hand against the deck within four seconds.

"This ain't over!" shouted Axton, shooting up to his feet.

"Stop being a little girl", sighed Salvador, who pushed himself to his feet. "Just pay up five million."

"Hey!" Lilith said, peering out over towards the horizon with hand over her eyebrows to block out a bit of the sun. "Are those dolphins? I friggin' love dolphins!"

They all turned towards the direction she was looking in and there were a trio of shiny, emerald and sapphire-colored dolphin-like creatures 'porpoising' or leaping in and out of water in semi-parallel direction about eight yards out from their ship. They had several sets of lateral fins along its body as well as an extraordinarily long tail with flukes on the end to aid in its awesome leaping ability.

"That's friggin' cool", said Lilith. "I haven't seen a dolphin in a long time."

"Yes!" yelled Axton, who pulled an assault rifle and ripped back the charging handle, discharging a round and catching it in one hand. He walked over to the side of the boat facing the dolphin creatures.

"Hey, Sal!" Axton yelled. "Double or nothing! I bet I can hit one of those dolphins with this round!"

"Are you serious right now?" asked Maya.

"Hell yes I am!"

"You're such a friggin' idiot, I love it!" yelled Salvador after a guffaw. "Okay, you're on!"

"Oh my god", Lilith said, hopping down onto the lower deck with them to get a better look.

Axton excitedly turned to get into position and reared back to fling his round. He waited for about five seconds.

"Well, if you're gonna do, then do it you *****", said Mordecai.

"I'm gonna need you to calm down, alright!" Axton said, turning to Mordecai and putting out his hands in a calming motion. "Just caaalm down! Are you calm?"

"Yeah, I'm-", began Mordecai.

"I'm gonna need to make sure you're calm because you really scared me back there!" Axton went on. "Are you sure that you're calm?"

"Axton, will you throw the damn round!" shouted Maya.

Barely even looking, Axton turned and flung the round high in the air towards the dolphin creatures. They heard a hollow _thunk_ noise as it hit the head of the closest dolphin in mid-leap.

The vault hunters erupted in cheering and hooting.

"Ohhhhhhhhh!" yelled Axton with his hands in the air. He turned back to look at Mordecai and pointed at him. "Thank you for staying calm, bro!"

Mordecai just stared back.

"It's all because of you!" Axton said before turning to Salvador. He slapped his left with his right in an exaggerated motion. "Ten! Million! Dollaz! In my hand! Right now! Let's go!"

Salvador sighed before inputting some commands into his storage deck on his waistbelt.

"I want everybody to know I'm not a sore better like Axton", he said as he digitized out ten million dollars in ten thousand dollar bills from his personal bank and handed it over to Ax.

"Whatever, loser!" said Ax as he snatched it away. He then turned to the others, laughing in a decidedly evil fashion. He spread the bills apart like a fan and pretended to fan himself off. One of the ten thousand dollar bills flew off into the wind. "Ooh, lost a bill. Hey, Sal, give me another ten thousand!"

"No!" yelled Sal.

"Oh well!" said Axton. "Still ten million in my book!"

He then turned to Gaige and did a little dance, even doing a bit of the stanky leg.

"Gaige, have you seen so much moneyz in yo' damn life?" he asked her.

"And they say _I'm _the crazy one", Gaige commented. She then looked over Axton's shoulder at the rapidly approaching splashing sounds. While Axton had distracted everybody by acting an ass, the dolphin Axton had hit was rapidly porpoising towards their ship with revenge on its advanced animal mind. Gaige could see the fury in its glowing orbs for eyes.

"Oh, Snapple!" Gaige yelled. "Ax, look out!"

"Whaaaaa-!" yelled Ax as he turned in time for the emerald dolphin to leap in the air and slap him in an upwards motion from beneath his chin with its tail, sending him ten feet up in the air. The dolphin used its momentum to follow its assaulter into the sky. It leveled its tail with his head and slapped him twice more with its tail in opposite, sweeping motions across the face, knocking his head in both directions. Axton was flung to the water twenty yards away from the boat, making a rather large splash. The dolphin somersaulted in the opposite direction and already began to porpoise away.

His friends ran to the edge of the ship to peer out where Axton landed, in concern.

"Holy Balls!" exclaimed Maya. "Is he dead?"

That was answered when Axton shot up, waving his arms and taking a gulp of air before sinking again.

"Unfortunately, not", answered Lilith.

"Shoo-!" he yelled as he jumped up, trying to yell to them before sinking.

"What?" asked Gaige. "We can't hear you!"

"Shoot!" Axton yelled again.

"Are you trying to 'shoo' us?" Gaige yelled out.

"Shoot!" Axton yelled, bobbing up and down out of the water. "That ************!"

They looked back in the opposite direction where the dolphin had made it to its friends and was porpoising away with them. It was doing no harm.

"Yeah, we're not going to do that!" Lilith called out to him. "You kind of deserved it! Do you need help though? You look like you're having trouble there, stud?"

"No!" yelled Axton, slamming his arms on the water like a child not getting his way as he struggled to tread water. "Shoot that damn dolphin! I demand … vengeance!"

"You're being a child!" called out Lilith. "Which makes no sense seeing as you look like Grizzly Adams!"

"Who the hell is Grizzly Adams?" yelled Axton.

"Just swim back here, you idiot!" Lilith called out to him.

.

Their usual vault hunter antics died down a bit after that. Zer0 just kept them on course and all they wanted to do was find the hole in the sea. The day was almost over and boredom threatened to overtake them again.

"Do you think we'll fall inside?" Gaige asked Maya, who was drinking some water by the railings. Maya turned to her, getting a few more gulps worth from the bag before handing it over to Gaige.

"It won't be pretty but I don't think there's any other way inside", Maya told her. "The picture Physis painted was that it's like a black hole."

"Scary stuff", Gaige said, taking a gulp from the bag before squeezing the bag and making it swish around inside. "Running low on food and water."

"I know", answered Maya as she turned away and lowered her head. "Physis says we're close though. We should be there by Nyaos dusk."

"Nyaos", Gaige echoed, looking out over the ocean. "It isn't Pandora. This place seems so empty. Lifeless. Pandora was never that."

"Whaaat?" asked Maya, looking over her shoulder with a smile. "You miss Pandora? You aren't missing Eden 5?"

"I miss my folks, yeah", said Gaige. "But I _hated_ Eden 5. All my life, it felt like I couldn't breathe. The totalitarian governments everywhere kicked us at every opportunity unless you were rich and powerful. Everybody else was cattle. That's why I'm going to use my cut from the treasure and real e-tech guns to buy a ship and get my parents off that place. I don't know. Maybe, Pandora isn't the place for us to live. Maybe we wander the stars looking for a home. I know one thing. It isn't crappy Eden 5."

"Look alive, vault hunters", called Physis' appearing semi-transparent astral projection, "Vandarr ships approach."

She pointed out to the west of the ship, where two black shapes approached them from the dimming horizon. The shapes turned out to be two amphibious aircraft, shaped like rockets of sorts with semi-transparent plasma barriers to protect from mild damage and ease entry into water at high speeds.

One of them zoomed past their ship like a bullet and came to slow stop on one side of them while one eased in on the other side, boxing them in.

Zer0 brought their ship to a slow crawl as it was pointless to try to outrun the two ships.

"Gear up, guys!" Maya said to her friends. "They're the eridians we're looking for and Physis says they're not friendly!"

"Exactly!" Physis said as she saw Salvador strap bandoliers of rifle rounds across his chest in crossing arcs.

"It's about damn time", Mordecai said, checking the chamber on his caustic sniper rifle before making sure to grab a few grenades from his storage deck and strapping them to his belt.

"You're trespassing on Vandarr waters!" a booming voice said over their speaking systems as clearly as though it was over the EchoNet. "Surrender yourselves willingly or you will sunk where you sit! This is your only warning!"

"This is _my_ warning!" Maya yelled as she phaselocked one of the ships, causing it to dip violently towards the water before it corrected itself. Gaige, Mordecai, Lilith, Zer0, Sal and Axton all opened fire on both sides. Salvador was being reckless with it; he split his arms apart and fired a shredifier at one while shooting a Conference Call at the other while wearing The Bee shield _and _was screaming the entire time.

Long rows of a dozen or so rocket turrets began to digitize on both ships.

"Here we go!" shouted Mordecai as he focused his fire on the turrets as did everybody else. Unfortunately, the strange, gel-like shielding wasn't budging and letting the turrets be harmed. The rockets fired almost simultaneously in strange, looping, unpredictable arcs. They all tried to follow and shoot them.

Maya managed to phaselock four on one side and two on the other side momentarily due to sheer luck of them being so close together. Mordecai managed to hit just _one_ of the rockets, setting off a chain reaction of setting off multiple explosions above them. This knocked all of the vault hunters off of their feet. When Maya was forced to release her rockets, _those_ rockets blew up, causing every other rocket to blow and increasing the damage even more. They huddled on the ground as fire and metal dropped onto their ship.

Even more, a peripheral gun digitized itself into existence on the undercarriage of one of the ships. This gun fired a concentrated, cutting laser that fired into water, causing the water to boil under its touch and splash the water upwards in parting geysers, literally parting the sea. The Vandarr raised this laser towards the ship.

"Holy crap!" yelled Gaige when she saw the approaching laser. "Guys, scatter!"

She pushed Maya away and the others lunged for opposite ends of the boat while laser came in and burned through the entire. They watched in horror as the laser successfully cut the ship in two pieces down the middle, causing both sides to capsize upwards away from the middle. They all slid involuntarily towards the fall sides of their respective halves.

"Okay!" shouted Mordecai. "This sucks! We need a different plan!"

The back of his head and shoulders fell backwards smack into the pilot's cabin. As he tried to push himself back up, Zer0 fell right into him.

The ghostly image of Physis' astral projection appeared before all of the vault hunters, simultaneously floating on both sides of the ship.

"I see _this_ ship hasn't fare any better than the last one", she observed, looking around.

"You're damn right it didn't", responded Salvador as he tried to push himself to his feet.

"You have no chance from the outside to bypass their shielding before they obliterate but you should be able to disable them from the inside", Physis told them. "I can jaunt a few of you inside the ships at a time where you can do your work."

"You can do that?" asked Lilith

"Are you sure you want us to?" asked Gaige. "Are you sure you don't want us to try and negotiate with them or something? I mean, they are your people."

Physis seemed to think on it for about two seconds.

"Naaah, you're good", Physis said quickly. "When I teleport you, waste no time in killing as many as you can. They are merciless so you must be as well."

"Okay…" started Gaige before Physis lunged forward and phased through her.

.

A second later, Gaige stumbled into an expansive room filled with long rows of floating green clouds of a unique Nyaos element. Within that element were energy-based monitors of sorts, each capturing images of different angles of the vault hunter ship. Truthfully, they were computers crafted from advanced eridian technology to not only record data at an accelerated rate but manipulate surrounding matter to an extent. Seated in front of most of them were eridians, who looked back at Gaige with shocked expressions all over their stony, inhuman faces.

Gaige was in shock too. She looked beside her where Maya and Mordecai were standing beside her. Each of them raised their respective weapons.

"Umm", Gaige uttered. "I guess we're here … to sink your battleship."

One of the eridians stood straight up and Gaige immediately shot him in the chest with her PB&J. Each round blasted holes through him, blasting rock-hard flesh from him. He seemed mostly unaffected before another shot blasted half of his body away, including his head and upper right shoulder. An ebb of blue energy seem to mist away from his body as he sunk to the floor. Most of the other eridians in the room got up to run away while armed, armored eridians rushed into the room with their own brand of energy weapons.

"Get down!" shouted Maya as the three vault hunters dropped to the ground and avoided the fast moving balls of lightning blasting over their heads. They ducked behind the strange eridian terminals, which responded to the lightning by dissipating it.

"Nifty", commented Gaige.

"Shut up, Gaige", said Maya as she peered around the corner and phaselocked one of the eridians, drawing them together in a single field and dousing them all in acid, flames and slag.

Mordecai stepped back from behind cover to blast some holes into the gathered eridians. He found that rounds to the head, though very damaging, didn't seem to kill them.

"This is weird", Mordecai commented when he took all of their heads but saw that they were still squirming within the field.

Gaige stood up and saw this as well. She put a hand on Maya's shoulder.

"Maya, let them go right quick", she requested. "Let's see something."

Maya reluctantly dropped them to the ground where they landed on their feet. To their horror, all four of the guards got to their feet and sprouted new energy-constructed heads to replace their old ones, actual phantom body parts.

"Guys, we have a problem", Mordecai said over EchoNet to the other vault hunters. He raised his rifle and fired four quick shots through each of their heads but the rounds simply phased through them.

"We probably have the same problem!" Salvador yelled as he ducked beneath enemy fire on the other ship. Physis had jaunted Salvador, Lilith, Axton and Zer0 onto the other ship but they quickly realized that whatever eridian they put down quickly regenerated itself. Lilith eventually said 'screw it' and went into phasewalk mode. She zipped around the room in a semi-invisible state, tagging all of the eridians. They found themselves moving involuntarily moving in slow motion, allowing Salvador, Axton and Zer0 to gun them down. They found that the eridians had a glowing heart-like organ in their center cavities that seemed to explode when hit.

"Hmm", Zer0 said as he fired at one with an assault rifle, exploding the top half of one of these security eridians.

"What?" asked Lilith as she reappeared, "something wrong?"

"Yes", Zer0 said. "I am eridian and I don't quite work like that. They seemed to have focused their souls to a single point in their bodies. The reasoning to this is puzzling."

"You!" shouted a heavily armored Vandarr with spikes extending from all sides of his armor and carrying a strange ghostly rifle, who entered the expansive room with a squad behind him. "You are trespassing on Vandarr territories and moreso on _my_ ship! For this, we must smack the bitch out you!"

"Wow", commented Lilith. "I wasn't expecting smack-talk like _that_."

"I am also alarmed", agreed Zer0.

* * *

**Introduction Alert**

Vandarr Warriors: _Reality bending-sumbitches who don't know how to die. Somebody better teach 'em. (BlandGardener spits some chew on the ground)._

* * *

An energy-based rift appears on the ground in front of the Vandarr squad and the squad leader fires into it. A second rift appears on the ceiling above Lilith, Zer0, Axton, and Salvador. The squad leader's rounds rain down onto them, chipping at Zer0's, Axton's and Lilith's armor before they react and scatter behind nearby cover.

Axton leans back against his terminal, reprieved, when the torso of one of the warriors emerges through the rift on the wall next to him, firing at him.

Axton gets up and runs away, screaming as he fires back over his shoulder.

"This is a violation of ROE!" Axton yells. "I demand to see your lawyer!"

While the warriors were using scare tactics and small room-guerilla warfare to funnel the vault hunters behind the terminals in the center of the room, they had their bladeweaver on standby. Bladeweaver was the name for their digital blade-wielding warrior in their squad. He brandished two long, digital scythes and went about his duty.

He sprinted full-speed down the center aisle of terminals, looking to eviscerate the vault hunters in their hiding places with his sabres drawn out to his sides. He sliced through every terminal he came across. What he wasn't counting on was Zer0, who slid beneath the warrior's sabres and stood with an upward swing with his own digital katana. The warrior fell forward and rolled to a stop, smashing a few terminals in his path. Zer0 had sliced off the eridian's left leg at the knee, as the leg was sitting off the side, spasming in its puddle of luminescent blue blood.

Zer0 turned towards the weaver as phantom visage formed over the warrior's missing part before more flesh and armor rapidly grew and threaded itself together in its place. The warrior laughed as he limped to his feet, steadying himself on his new leg. He gripped the sabres in his hands, readying himself for their battle.

"You have a great strike, olden warrior", the weaver said, extending one of his sabres towards Zer0 in a threatening gesture, "but you've picked the wrong side. Your time in the sun is over. For the Vandarr!"

"Shut up and die", responded Zer0 as he sprinted towards the Vandarr with his katana in position for an upward swipe.


	6. 2X2: Fantasies of a Violent Heaven, pt 2

Zer0 lunged forward for a dashing strike at the bladereaver, which the eridian parried with a single saber. Zer0 knew that his next move would be to strike with his secondary saber, which he did, swinging it towards Zer0's neck. Zer0 immediately broke contact and dropped to the ground and rolled away from his opponent. The bladereaver didn't follow him, clearly playing the defensive, which was smart due to his heavy armor.

When Zer0 rose again, the eridian crouched and reared back with both arms and flung both sabers towards Zer0 in two crisscrossing arcs, both blades leaving trails of energy in their wake. Both blades made deadly accurate swings for his neck, while he readied himself for a last-second dive. To his surprise, Salvador simply shot them both out of the air, knocking them harmlessly to the ground.

"You dishonorable mortal!" yelled one of the warriors at Salvador as the others cursed him in their eridian tongue. "Their fight was a solitary one!"

"Yeah…" said Lilith with a hiss, "we're vault hunterrrrs so we don't care about that crap."

With that, Axton, Lilith and Salvador opened fire on their eridian enemies. Zer0 used the distraction to fling his digi-blade in a straight line right at his bladereaver opponent where it plunged through his armor where his soul essence was focused. The warrior was thrown backwards from the impact into the wall behind him.

Zer0 leaned down to pick up the sabers, exchanging glances with Axton in the process. Ax recognized this and stopped firing to move behind the firing line to the other side of Lilith and Salvador. Zer0 ran over to the dying bladereaver and used his own blades cut his head off of his shoulders. Zer0 then looked at the blades in his hands.

"Eh, I would've won anyway", he said, "but I like these."

He digitized the blades into his storage deck and pulled his own sword out of the bladereaver's chest.

The vault hunters had taken advantage, forcing the eridians behind cover with their aggressive assault. Lilith, Ax and Salvador used the terminals on their side of the room to avoid fire themselves but used every free second to run behind a terminal closer to the eridians.

Zer0 used the opportunity to flank the two farthest eridians on their right side, stabbing one of them in the back through his core. Zer0 impaled one of his newly-acquired sabers in the top of the other's head and yanking it right off his body with a few hard tugs. Axton acknowledged Zer0's flanking maneuver and signaled Lilith and Sal into launching a direct assault.

"Assault the objective!" he yelled as they advanced towards the eridians. "Hehe! Double-tap them if you have to!"

He flung one of his sabers on the ceiling above all of their heads. The turret turned its barrel upside-down and rained fire on all of their heads.

Lilith jaunted towards an eridian warrior in phasewalk and hit him in the face with her empowered left palm, causing him to bend backwards unnaturally even for his species.

"Yeah, bitch!" she screamed as she aimed downwards and fired a dozen Hellfire SMG rounds into his soul core, killing him.

Another warrior opened fire on her, catching her a bit in her shield. She then phasewalked again and jaunted right through him with her signature blight phoenix fire elemental wings on her back. She ended up on the other side of him and turned around to see him engulfed in blue flames, screaming as he began cooking inside his own armor.

Salvador knocked the last eridian off of his feet with his double-barreled shotguns, and chased him down; he ran and screamed as he continued to shoot the body, knocking it across the room continuously like a soccer ball. He eventually shot the eridian's remains right out of the room.

"Sal!" yelled Lilith. "I think you're good!"

"Goddamn, that was good!" yelled Sal. "Was it good for you guys?"

He threw down his guns and pulled a cigar from his storage deck to smoke it.

"We don't have time for that!" yelled Lilith. They heard an alarm go off throughout the ship.

"Great!" she said. "Now what?"

**.**

Maya, Gaige and Mordecai had to deal with a different threat entirely on the ship they appeared aboard.

* * *

**Introduction Alert**

Eridian Soul Extract: _A floating,_ **conscious**_ ball of sticky-icky goo with powers that will make you go 'oooh!' … and then die an agonizing death._

* * *

Three balls of floating Eridian Soul Extract zoomed into the room and quickly tried to flank the vault hunters on opposite sides. They created trails of semi-transparent energy in their wake that seemed to create ripples in its immediate surroundings regardless of the state of matter. Mordecai saw the walls rippling like water as they advanced on them.

"What the hell are _those _things?" asked Mordecai.

"I think I'm tired of both asking _and_ hearing that question!" Maya yelled as raised her plasma caster. "Just kill 'em!"

The three vault hunters opened fire on the three floating orbs. They didn't seem affected much, only flashing red in response to the impact. The extract carried a strange swarm of tiny, mosquito-like green creatures at its epicenter. Protruding from the center were networks of greenish veins and capillaries carrying the powerful creatures throughout the body of each of the orbs. Each of them pulsated erratically in as they flew as a result.

An extract fired a ball of its matter-altering energy at Gaige, hitting the PB&J SMG in her hands. As a result, the gun began growing increasingly hot in her hands to the extent that she had to drop it. She jumped backwards in pain and saw that the gun was glowing orange and getting brighter by the second.

"What the-!" she yelled out, approaching it. "M-my gun!"

Maya saw this and phaselocked Gaige, yanking her away just as the gun exploded on the ground with the force of a grenade, destroying most of the terminals in the room, sending the vault hunters hurtling to the other side of the room into the wall.

As the smoke cleared, Gaige struggled to push herself to hands and knees.

"It … isn't … fair", she moaned. "I … really liked that gun."

"I know", Mordecai said as he looked up to see eridian warriors filter into the room to accompany the extract, "I know but we're sitting ducks right now. Now move!"

Mordecai got up and ran in a lateral direction to his right as the eridian warriors opened fire on them, firing purple ammo from their eridian battle rifles. He managed to dodge the extract's slow-moving matter altering attacks as well. He was just running towards the wall, though. There was nowhere to hide and his returned fire wasn't doing much.

Maya formed balls of volatile, swirling phase energy in her hands, crushing them together before she pushed them into the ground. A large phaselock field, or rather her own pocket dimension, spread across the floor and rose to rapidly cover the entire room. The air took on a purplish-blue tint with floating embers of white light floating around.

Maya, Gaige, Mordecai and the eridian warriors found themselves floating in mid-air against their will; everybody who wasn't Maya were flailing about frantically and were disoriented. Mordecai saw that the extract orbs were bubbling outwards and falling apart, unable to withstand the low gravity of Maya's pocket dimension.

"Maya, what the hell?!" shouted Mordecai. "You phaselocked the entire room?! This leaves us in a worst position than before!"

"Just trust me!" shouted Maya. Though she said it, even _she_ didn't believe it. She had never attempted something like that before. She just knew she had to do _something_; they were seriously outnumbered and outgunned.

"Dammit!" shouted Mordecai as the eridians fired on them but him specifically. Their purple shard e-tech rounds soared across the room towards them at a much slower acceleration than usual as Maya was forcing a lot of resistance on them. To their astonishment, Mordecai and Gaige watched the glowing rounds actually veer away from them at the last second and bounce harmlessly off of the walls and surrounding terminals where they simply floated in the air. Thirty or so rounds did this very same thing.

The eridians saw this and most of them actually lowered their weapons and froze in astonishment. This displayed ability was an advanced eridian binder technique that was produced from a _human_. None of their own binders had ever displayed such abilities. This was the ability of an advanced siren, something their superiors would be very interested in.

One of them began yelling at Maya, Mordecai and Gaige in his eridian tongue, something which disturbed Maya to no end. The Order of the Impending Storm had spoken that same language, she realized so many years later and she _still_ hated it.

"English!" Maya yelled. "We only speak English!"

"You are a siren!" he shouted, translating himself. "A prophesized daughter of the Pandorum Empire! You must submit to us to study! For science!"

"Yeah, I don't think so!" answered Maya before looking at her two teammates to her right. "What are you guys waiting for? Shoot!"

All three fired on the eridians. Maya's surrounding poc-dimension augmented the damage of their rounds to an extent that every round that hit an eridian tore huge chunks from them, mutilating them in a sense. Their disembodied soul cores poured forth from their bodies where they dissipated in Maya's phaselock field, effectively killing them.

"Whoa", was all Gaige could say.

**.**

Axton, Salvador, Zer0 and Lilith began to tactically move out from the terminal room Physis had jaunted them. Axton took point as they stacked against the wall besides the open doorway leading to a hallway with open space on both sides. Axton knew open space on a battlefield was the worst place you could be and they would have open space on both sides of them. He took a mirror out of his storage deck, momentarily using it to check his teeth. Yep, pearly white as usual. Damn, he was one hot dude if he did say so himself.

"Axton, use that mirror to check our corner or shove it up your ass!" Lilith whispered harshly. "Come on!"

Zer0 half-turned and shushed her.

Axton stuck it out and turned it to catch a reflection of the hallway.

"Whoa, dude!"

"What?" asked Salvador.

Suddenly, Axton ran around the corner to their collective dismay.

"What the-!" said Salvador.

"Ax, get your ass back here!" called Lilith, still in a half-whisper.

Zer0 shushed her again.

"OK, now _you're_ starting to piss me off!" she told Zer0.

The three of them stood up and followed Axton around the corner where they found him seated behind a large purple turret crafted with eridian metals, with a forty-inch barrel.

"Guys!" Axton yelled. "Check this out!" He pointed to a belt of large, glowing, cylindrical rounds protruding from the chamber. "What caliber are those rounds?! I have no idea! This seat is really comfortable too! It's not leather but it's even better!"

"I've seen this weapon before", Zer0 said, looking it over. "It's an Obliteration gun. Very powerful."

Axton then pushed a lever in front of him to the right and they watched as the entire gun rotated on a small motorized platform beneath it in a three-hundred and sixty degree turn.

"Oh ****!" Axton shouted as he looked over his shoulder at the others and rotated the gun towards them. "Get down!"

They immediately dropped down to the ground out of the way of the gigantic barrel.

"What the ****, Axton!" Lilith shouted as he let loose a flurry of very loud rounds over her head at a fire team of eridian warriors that had turned the corner in their hallway. The rounds glowed like tracer rounds, zipping through the air like projected purple ember, tearing apart the enemy. They didn't necessarily go _through_, they took chunks out of them. One round maimed them, tearing the arms and legs off of a couple of them easily. When they finally slumped to the ground, they were barely recognizable as bipedal, living things. Axton let out a few more rapid-fire rounds after they died, tearing huge chunks out of the reinforced wall behind them incredibly easily. He finally took his finger off of the trigger weld and whistled.

"I-I … want it", he whispered, completely seduced.

Lilith, who had been lying down on the ground on her belly, dug her index fingers into her ear canals and shook them around to hopefully get some hearing back.

"Ow!" she yelled up at him. "That thing is loud!"

Axton leaned forward over the rear sight of the gun to open the chamber port. Axton winced and pulled away at first because he touched a hot part at first but he saw the next round on the belt resting in the center, just waiting to be fired. He reached down and caressed it. It was actually transparent but felt much harder than glass. Inside each round was what appeared to be a purple plasma.

As he leaned over it, he noticed the seat was having a weird reaction from coming into contact with the storage deck around his waist. A static charge seemed to emanate from it though Axton didn't feel anything and he saw the chair flash into a transparent matter that was filled with floating binary numbers.

"What the hell is that?" asked Salvador.

"That weapon can be digitized", answered Zer0.

"That thing?" asked Lilith, standing up and pointing at it in question.

"Yes", answered Zer0, who stood as well.

"It's a damn shame I can't carry the damn thing and I'm sure it's too big to hold in my storage deck straight up", said Axton wistfully as he slapped the back of it in frustration.

"You're right about that but we may be able to remedy that", Zer0 said, walking over and looking over the gun.

"Okay, now how do you propose we do that, Ninja Gaiden?" Axton asked him.

A straight-faced emoticon appeared over his mask.

"Just step down and let met learn you something, human", said Zer0, stepping towards him.

"Oooh", howled Salvador, instigating the diss.

With a chuckle, Axton stepped away from the gun. Zer0 replaced him in his spot and reached forward over the barrel. He pressed the 'release' button to open the lock holding the barrel in position. He then used the handle on top of the long barrel to push it out a bit so that he could get around the gun and pull it out. He lifted the barrel and cradled it in his arms away from the gun.

"Who wants the barrel?" he asked, looking at them.

The three of them just stared at him awkwardly, not saying anything. The thing was pretty huge and they felt that carrying that thing around would slow them down big time. Even Salvador thought this.

"Fine", Zer0 said. "I'll do it."

He set it down on the ground and knelt down to press the button on his storage deck to digitize it.

**.**

On the other ship, Maya, Mordecai and Gaige moved out from their terminal room towards their own hallway. Maya peered around the corner to see a warrior running towards her. She immediately shot him through the core, killing him and sending him flying towards the wall. She knelt back into the room.

"Okay, Physis!" Maya called out. "We're in trouble! If you have any idea what we're looking at here, let us know!"

Mordecai gestured for Maya to scoot over so that he could get some shots off at the advancing warriors from around the corner. He held up a Jakobs revolver.

"What are you gonna do with that puny thing?" commented Gaige. "Throw it at them?"

Mordecai raised an eyebrow at her quizzically.

"Puny?" he asked with a smile. He thumbed the hammer back and poked his body out to the left to get a shooting vantage on the enemy. There were five of them. He put a single bullet through their cores, killing them all with one shot each. He moved back behind cover to digitize a few bullets into his hand. He pushed the barrel out and swiftly used one hand to roll the barrel and the other to push the bullets into the cylinder slots. He loaded the bullets into the five empty slots of eight round barrel in less than three seconds. Gaige was impressed as she never thought to use that technique and she had to give it to him, it was a lot faster than she could load a gun.

She then heard some movement behind them to their 7' O clock but Mordecai had already flicked his barrel into place and pulled her close to him into a hug almost. He extended his firing arm over her left shoulder and killed all four of the incoming warriors with one shot each in just a little over one second altogether. He then flicked the barrel out and with his other arm extended over her right shoulder, he reloaded his gun right behind her head. She just looked up at his face in astonishment. He brought his hands and his gun back to himself in front of her face.

"Never half-ass it", he told her. "Never leave a gun half-loaded, even if you fire one shot."

"Wellll", said Gaige, "that goes against my whole philosophy … but I'll just shut up now."

The astral projection of Physis reappeared in front of them.

"More warriors approach from the east corridor", she said, pointing to the front of her and to the right of them.

Gaige peered out and saw them bounding towards them, popping off some plasma burst shots in their direction. She reached to her belt to pull out an incendiary grenade.

"I nominate grenade", Gaige said, looking at Maya as she bounced it up a bit in her palm.

Maya nodded eagerly in response.

She pressed the deploy button on the grenade, turned and flung it down the hallway. Due to its nature, it zipped right to the warriors and exploded.

"Follow me, vault hunters", Physis told them as she began to fly away from them down the hallway, "I'll show you the way to disable and command this ship."

Physis took off down the hallway towards the disabled warriors.

"Go go go go go!" yelled Maya as the three of them simultaneously ran down the hallway after them.

Gaige shot at the warriors after they rose again. Her shots caused great golden explosions of binary numbers, signifying her Anarchy app but that wasn't affecting them much.

Mordecai and Maya each took their own shots. Maya only managed to kill one while Mordecai killed six of them in the same amount of time.

They stopped at a closed door to their left where Physis phased inside. A second later, the door split open and the vault hunters ran inside.

The room was relatively small with a large stasis tube in the right corner, containing some odd pink humuculus-looking thing of sorts with eyeballs in the back of its hands and no head but a large vertical smile-shaped hole in the center of its chest.

"Ewwww", was Gaige's comment when she saw this.

"I saw you out there", Mordecai said to her. "You're relying on the power of your anarchy too much. That isn't going to cut it with these guys. You have to friggin' concentrate."

"Hey, I'm trying, okay", Gaige answered. "Just… stop yelling at me!"

Two eridian souls extract zoomed into the room and fired their matter altering blasts at them. They managed to drop to the ground in time as the blast went over their heads. From the ground, Maya extended her hands and put both in separate phaselock fields. Both orbs of extract simply fell apart. She then turned on her two comrades.

"Enough, you two!" Maya said to them. "We don't have time for that!"

Physis phased back into visibility at the far end of the room by the door.

"Come!" she told them. "You're almost to the piloting stations!"

She flew away from them and they followed her.

**.**

* * *

**Introduction Alert**

Overwatch Zyron:Asskicking equals authority among eridians too and this guy is like Stone Cold.

* * *

Overwatch Zyron sat in his throne room within the Natures Fortress, witnessing what was happening on both of his aura ships. He was much wider and gigantic in height compared to even other eridians, standing at over eleven feet in height and built like a tank and was as heavily armored as a mech. He was the highest-ranking military officer of the Natures and its effective leader. He watched the vault hunters commit mass murder on his warriors, helmsmen and extract through a surveillance pod seated in front of him. It shifted focus between all of the individual vault hunters.

"Humans!" Zyron yelled at as his support staff in his chambers. "Humans do _not_ survive on Nyaos let alone attack the Natures!"

"Not just _any_ humans, sere", stated a tall, slim eridian scholar dressed in Guardian-like armor. "There are two sirens with them."

Zyron peered closer into the surveillance pod and yes, he did see Maya and Lilith within them. Two of the prophesized that will save the Pandorum. He noticed the Marks of Sirens on both of them.

"Yes", Zyron said, looking out over his staff in the room, "this is a truly remarkable event that will storied and remembered throughout time. Of the six, two sirens are here. The Pandorum will surely return and when it does, the Natures will be at its nexus and Nyaos will be its capitol!"

**.**

Zer0, Axton, Salvador and Lilith ran through the halls, each with a digitized component of the Obliteration gun in their storage decks. Physis was pulling double duty, transferring her projection between the two ships, guiding both groups.

As the eridians were closing in on Zer0's group, Physis suddenly appeared to them.

"Actually", she told them, "Maya and the others are entering the control stations now and could use your help so …"

A purple flash later, Zer0, Axton, Salvador, and Lilith appeared on the other ship just in front of Maya, Gaige and Mordecai as they were running. Maya ran right into Zer0 and both went sprawling into the wall; Gaige tripped over them as they fell and flipped over Salvador; Mordecai tried to stop but he ended up shoving Axton right into Lilith, knocking them both to the ground. They all were laid out from their sudden reunion in the hallway, stunned for a bit from their collision.

**.**

Zyron and his staff watched all of this on the surveillance pod and they all burst into laughter.

"_These _are the ones who have been giving my propietary so much grief?" he asked them. "Ha! Just tell them to dispatch them quickly and bring the sirens to me."

"Yes, sere", one of his staff said.

**.**

"What are you doing?" Physis yelled as she reappeared before the fallen vault hunters. "Now isn't the time for lying about! It's 'pew-pew shooty-time' or whatever you vault hunters call it!"

"Well, maybe you should give us a warning before you do that!" yelled Axton as he rolled over on his side to look at her. "I thought we were friends!"

"Ouchie!" yelled out Gaige.

"Now I can see why you guys say it's annoying when I do that", said Lilith, talking about the teleportation she does.

"Come on!" Physis yelled.

**.**

"Your brothers and sisters have failed to kill them thus far!" Zyron's voice boomed over the comm pods in the control station chambers as he spoke to the Natures warriors and helmsmen within the room as they took battle positions to welcome the human intruders. "Do not fail the Natures as well!"

"For the sere and the Natures!" yelled one of the battle captains as they warriors aimed their weapons and blades at the sealed doors.

The doors were hit with a few loud bangs and pressed in a few times. Suddenly, the doors were blasted through, knocking the nearby eridians on their backs. Deathtrap zoomed into the room with Gaige on the left shoulder and Zer0 on the right.

"Screw accuracy!" yelled Gaige as she hopped down and kneeled to her knees with a slag Norfleet rocket launcher over her shoulder. She fired a large ball of it at a group, blowing them away in various directions. "I got big bang-level heat on my side!"

Deathtrap loomed around the room, soaking up e-tech rounds as Zer0 returned fire from his SMG.

Lilith phasewalked or rather phase_ran_ into the room, tagging a few eridians with punches. The eridians were encased in fields of her disorienting energy. They found themselves floating off the ground helplessly and against their will. Salvador cleaned up; sliding into the fray with two shredifiers in both hands. He obliterated all of their chest cavities and heads, tearing them to pieces.

Axton fired a few well-aimed Damned Cowboy shots at an eridian, killing him at the controls. An eridian warrior caught sight of him and sprinted for him. Axton recognized this and had little time to react so he lunged for the eridian's lower legs, chopping him off of his feet and causing him to somersault over him. Axton then leaned over the fallen eridian and killed him with a couple of shots.

He staggered back and winced, gripping his shoulder. The eridian was very large and very _hard. _It was like a brick wall hit _him_. He was just lucky that the eridian had so much momentum and his own adrenaline was so high or it would hurt a lot worse. He definitely wasn't going to try it again though.

Another eridian warrior popped up behind him, preparing to slice his head off. To Axton's dismay, a shot whizzed right by him and caught the eridian in the core, killing him. He looked up to see that Mordecai had saved his life.

Mordecai then turned and swiftly killed four more eridians around him. He then noticed an eridian soul extract above him. He fired three bullets at it, causing it to dissipate. He found himself out of bullets temporarily so he flung his long knife into the core of another eridian while he reloaded.

Very quickly, the vault hunters realized that they had killed every eridian in the room.

"Well, that was fun!" Gaige stated, slinging the Norfleet to her back. "Now, onto the Distorted Isle!"

"This first", said Zer0 as he hopped down Deathtrap's shoulder and ran over to the controls, hopping over all of the eridian bodies on the way.

"I don't know why you guys aren't looting right now", Sal commented as he walked over several of the eridians, digitizing their combat rifles. "I never seen _any_ of these guns!"

The others immediately snapped to their senses and began looting as well.

"Mine!" yelled out Gaige as he picked up a gun and went on picking up guns. "Mine! Mine! This is also mine!"

"I get it!" yelled Mordecai. "Shut up already!"

Zer0 took command of their ship and turned its plasma cannons towards the other ship. He opened fire, tearing large holes in it and caused it to catch flames. It sunk out of the sky and fell into the ocean. The vault hunters cheered and clapped in response.

"We coming for that vault!" shouted Lilith.

**.**

Zyron and his staff watched all of this on their digi-map, speechless. They also heard and saw them on their comm pods.

Axton stood next to Zer0 at the controls and noticed a comm panel. He could actually see Zyron staring at him through it.

"Oh, you must be like the boss, right?" asked Axton to Zyron. He turned to the others and called out to them. "Hey, guys! I think I got the boss on visual!"

Gaige, Maya, Lilith, and Mordecai came over to get a look.

"Everybody say 'hiiiiiii!" said Axton as he waved down at Zyron.

"Hiiiiiii!" yelled Gaige, Maya and Lilith as they excitedly waved down at him.

"We're coming for your vault, dude!" yelled Lilith.

"How are you doing this?" Zyron asked. "We are the most dominant force on Nyaos. Humans cannot survive on this world, let alone thrive! Who are you?"

"Um, we're vault hunters, dum-dum", answered Gaige matter-of-factly. "_Nobody_ can stop us!"

"And you sirens", Zyron continued, "if you surrender yourselves to our whim, we will let your companions live."

"Yeah?" Maya asked. "Well, here's our answer to that."

Maya stuck up a middle finger at him.

"Oh, that's good!" said Lilith.

Lilith, Axton, Gaige and Mordecai all followed suit and stuck up middle fingers at him.

"What does that gesture mean?" wondered Zyron. "'Farewell'?"

They simply laughed at that.

"Okay, we're done with you, guy", Axton said. "Just know that we're coming to the Distorted Isle and we're coming for your vault. Who knows? Maybe we'll kill ya too if you don't run. So, don't run, alright? Zer0, how you turn this thing off?"

Zer0 reached over and shut it off, losing connection with Zyron.

**.**

Zyron sat on his high chair, sitting in stunned silence as his staff stood around him.

"We may be in trouble, sere", one of his advisors finally said after a long pause.

"Whaaat?!" Zyron asked before he grabbed the eridian's head with his gigantic hand, fitting his palm around his face like a gifted basketball player palming a basketball. He then turned and flung him hard against the wall, causing his face to hit it first, followed by the rest of his body. The poor advisor then slid helplessly down the wall like a swat fly.

"These 'vault hunters' will _not _make it past the shores of this isle", Zyron said to his staff. "These '_vault hunters'_ will not touch our treasures! These sirens will surrender to our will and Vendarr Natures will rise to prominence in the Pandorum! Is that understood?"

"No need to fret, Overwatch", said a seated eridian noblewoman, apart from the others but still part of the discussion. She was dressed in a dark, glowing scarlet dress and robes and decorative headdress with four wide high points. "My binders will succeed where your warriors failed horribly. They'll regret coming through the waterfront to the Distorted Isle. They won't even make it to the shores."

* * *

**Introduction Alert**

Ascending High Binder Paliah:_ The highest classed binder at Distorted Isle. Also a high-class bitch._

* * *

**.**

Physis floated amongst the vault hunters as they stood on the command deck of the commandeered Natures ship and headed towards the Distorted Isle. Finally, they approached the water-based anomaly. It was a massive whirlpool in the center of the ocean; only the center of the vortex was a dark hole. The water surrounding it didn't fall in, it simply whirled violently _around_ it. It was an anomaly alright.

"That's it, huh?" asked Mordecai.

"Yes", answered Physis, "within the Black Pool is the Distorted Isle. Prepare yourselves, warriors, what you may know to be 'normal' may not exist. Your laws of physics don't always apply here. Within the Isle is the Natures Stronghold. They protect many secrets as well as your vault."

"Remind me again", cut in Sal, "why are you helping us?"

"Those secrets are supposed to contain secrets of my past as well", Physis said. "Secrets of the former Eridian Empire; things that are lost to me. I'll be with you every step of the way but beware, vault hunters; this will be your most challenging battle thus far."

"We've heard this before", said Zer0 as he pulled the ship in towards the Black Pool at a downward angle, "yet we always overcome."


End file.
